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_A Lecture delivered at Manchester, July 10, 1857._
1. Among the various characteristics of the age in which we live, as compared with other ages of this not yet _very_ experienced world, one of the most notable appears to me to be the just and wholesome contempt in which we hold poverty. I repeat, the _just_ and _wholesome_ contempt; though I see that some of my hearers look surprised at the expression. I assure them, I use it in sincerity; and I should not have ventured to ask you to listen to me this evening, unless I had entertained a profound respect for wealth -- true wealth, that is to say; for, of course, we ought to respect neither wealth nor anything else that is false of its kind: and the distinction between real and false wealth is one of the points on which I shall have a few words presently to say to you. But true wealth I hold, as I said, in great honour; and sympathize, for the most part, with that extraordinary feeling of the present age which publicly pays this honour to riches.