founded on cost, by an appeal to their market values. How then is it possible to say with any truth, that morals, talents, and personal attainments may be placed with propriety in the category of wealth, because they are capable of being rigorously appreciated. On the other hand, there seems to be no kind of incongruity in allowing that wealth, according to the most common acceptation of the term, may be employed in obtaining gratifications which it would be most inconvenient and embarrassing to call by the same name as the material products which were given for them. A man of fortune has the means of purchasing the gratification of leisure; he has often the means of collecting at his table persons from whom he is likely to hear the most agreeable and instructive conversation; he has the means of travelling into different countries, seeing the beauties of nature in her grandest forms, contemplating the finest models of art, ancient and modern, studying the character and polity of different nations, and laying in a stock of taste and information calculated to refine, improve, and enlarge his mind. It will not be denied, that these are some of the modes of employing wealth, which are always, and most justly, considered as much superior in respectability, to the purchase of fine clothes, splendid furniture, or costly jewels. It is equally certain that the power of wealth to purchase these sources of intellectual gratification forms a most natural encouragement to the acquisition of it, and may therefore, with perfect propriety, be said to be indirectly productive of it. But it is a wide step in advance of these concessions, at once to place in the category of wealth, leisure, agreeable conversation, cultivated tastes, and general information. And yet if the gratification and information derived from a lecture on chemistry or the belles lettres, are to be considered as wealth, in consequence of a specific sum being paid for attendance, why should the taste and information acquired by a larger outlay in foreign travels be refused the same title.
