He valued
few things beside. He had different emotions for the rich from those
which he entertained for the poor; and, from perceiving that among men,
money could usurp all places--could defeat virtue, command respect
denied to morality and truth, and secure a real worship when the Deity
must be content with shows and symbols--he gradually gave it the chief
place in his regard. He valued wealth as the instrument of authority. It
secured him power; a power, however, which he had no care to employ, and
which he valued only as tributary to the maintenance of that haughty
ascendency over men which was his heart's first passion. He was neither
miser nor mercenary; he did not labor to accumulate--perhaps because he
was a lucky accumulator without any painstaking of his own: but he was,
by nature an aristocrat, and not unwilling to compel respect through the
means of money, as through any other more noble agency of intellect or
morals.
There was only one respect in which a likeness between the fortunes of
the two brothers might be found to exist.
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