sums, at Newport. At Ferncliffe-on-the-Hudson John Jacob Astor has an estate of two thousand acres. This country palace, built in chaste Italian architecture, is fitted with every convenience and luxury. John Jacob Astor's cousin, William Waldorf, some years since expatriated himself from his native country and became a British subject. He bought the Cliveden estate at Taplow, Bucks, England, the old seat of the Duke of Westminster, the richest landlord in England. Thenceforth William Waldorf scorned his native land, and has never even taken the trouble to look at the property in New York which yields him so vast a revenue. This absentee landlord, for whom it is estimated not less than 100,000 men, women and children directly toil, in the form of paying him rent, has surrounded himself in England with a lofty feudal exclusiveness. Sweeping aside the privilege that the general public had long enjoyed of access to the Cliveden grounds, he issued strict orders forbidding trespassing, and along the roads he built high walls surmounted with broken glass. His son and heir, Waldorf Astor, has avowed that he also will remain a British subject. William Waldorf Astor, it should be said, is somewhat of a creator of public opinion; he owns a newspaper and a magazine in London.
The origin and successive development of the Astor fortune have been laid bare in these chapters; not wholly so, by any means, for a mass of additional facts have been left out. Where certain fundamental facts are sufficient to give a clear idea of a presentation, it is not necessary to pile on too much of an accumulation. And yet, such has been the continued emphasis of property-smitten writers upon the thrift, honesty, ability and sagacity of the men who built up the great fortunes, that the impression generally prevails that the Astor fortune is preëminently one of those amassed by legitimate means. These chapters should dispel this illusion.