But this situation that so faces them may be construed as a larger opportunity, quite as well as a more difficult task.
A theoretical exposition of the place and cultural value of a leisure class in modern life would scarcely be in place here; and it has also been set out in some detail elsewhere.[10] For the purpose in hand it may be sufficient to recall that the canons of taste and the standards of valuation worked out and inculcated by leisure-class life have in all ages run, with unbroken consistency, to pecuniary waste and personal futility.

In its economic bearing, and particularly in its immediate bearing on the material well-being of the community at large, the leadership of the leisure class can scarcely be called by a less derogatory epithet than "untoward." But that is not the whole of the case, and the other side should be heard.

The leisure-class life of tranquility, running detached as it does above the turmoil out of which the material of their sustenance is derived, enables a growth of all those virtues that mark, or make, the gentleman; and that affect the life of the underlying community throughout, pervasively, by imitation; leading to a standardisation of the everyday proprieties on a presumably, higher level of urbanity and integrity than might be expected to result in the absence of this prescriptive model.
[Footnote 10: Cf.

_The Theory of the Leisure Class_, especially ch.
v.-ix.

and xiv.] _Integer vitae scelerisque purus_, the gentleman of assured station turns a placid countenance to all those petty vexations of breadwinning that touch him not.