Interludes Part 3

And when it has served for the master, 'Twill amply suffice for the maid; Meanwhile I will smoke my canaster, And tipple my ale in the shade."

Can anything be more awful than a public dinner--the waste, the extravagance, the outrageous superfluity of everything, the enormous waste of time, the solemn gorging, as if the whole end and aim of life were turtle and venison. I do not know whether to dignify such proceedings by the name of luxury. But what shall I say of gentlemen's clubs. They are the very hotbed of luxury. By merely asking for it you obtain almost anything you require in the way of luxury. I am aware that many men at clubs live more carefully and frugally, but I am aware also that a great many acquire habits of self-indulgence which produce idleness and selfish indifference to the wants of others. In a still more pernicious fashion, I think that refreshment bars at railway stations minister to luxury; at least I am sure they foster a habit of drinking more than is necessary, or desirable; and that is one form of luxury, and a very bad one. The fellows of a Camford college are reported to have met on one occasion and voted that we do sell our chapel organ; and the next motion, carried _nem. con_., was that we do have a dinner. As to ornaments for the dinner table what affectation and expense do we see. But in the days of Walpole it was not amiss. "The last branch of our fashion into which the close observation of nature has been introduced is our desserts. Jellies, biscuits, sugar plums, and creams have long since given way to harlequins, gondoliers, Turks, Chinese, and shepherdesses of Saxon china. Meadows of cattle spread themselves over the table. Cottages in sugar, and temples in barley sugar, pigmy Neptunes in cars of c.o.c.kle sh.e.l.ls trampling over oceans of looking gla.s.s or seas of silver tissue. Gigantic figures succeed to pigmies; and it is known that a celebrated confectioner complained that, after having prepared a middle dish of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses eighteen feet high, his lord would not cause the ceiling of his parlour to be demolished to facilitate their entree. "_Imaginez-vous_," said he, "_que milord n'a pas vouler faire oter le plafond_!"

To show how much luxurious living has increased during the present century I propose to quote a portion of that wonderfully brilliant third chapter of Macaulay's _England_ which we all know. Speaking of the squire of former days, he says, "His chief serious employment was the care of his property. He examined samples of grain, handled pigs, and, on market days, made bargains over a tankard with drovers and hop merchants. His chief pleasures were commonly derived from field sports and from an unrefined sensuality. His language and p.r.o.nunciation were such as we should now expect to hear only from the most ignorant clowns.

His oaths, coa.r.s.e jests, and scurrilous terms of abuse were uttered with the broadest accent of his province. It was easy to discern from the first words which he spoke whether he came from Somersetshire or Yorkshire. He troubled himself little about decorating his abode, and, if he attempted decoration, seldom produced anything but deformity. The litter of a farm-yard gathered under the windows of his bed-chamber, and the cabbages and gooseberry bushes grew close to his hall door. His table was loaded with coa.r.s.e plenty; and guests were cordially welcomed to it. But as the habit of drinking to excess was general in the cla.s.s to which he belonged, and as his fortune did not enable him to intoxicate large a.s.semblies daily with claret or canary, strong beer was the ordinary beverage. The quant.i.ty of beer consumed in those days was indeed enormous. For beer was then to the middle and lower cla.s.ses not only what beer is now, but all that wine, tea, and ardent spirits now are. It was only at great houses or on great occasions that foreign drink was placed on the board. The ladies of the house, whose business it had commonly been to cook the repast, retired as soon as the dishes were devoured, and left the gentlemen to their ale and tobacco. The coa.r.s.e jollity of the afternoon was often prolonged till the revellers were laid under the table."

I quote again from another portion of the same chapter in Macaulay:--"Slate has succeeded to thatch, and brick to timber. The pavements and the lamps, the display of wealth in the princ.i.p.al shops, and the luxurious neatness of the dwellings occupied by the gentry, would, in the seventeenth century, have seemed miraculous." Speaking of watering-places he says:--"The gentry of Derbyshire and of the neighbouring counties repaired to Buxton, where they were crowded into low wooden sheds and regaled with oatcake, and with a viand which the hosts called mutton, but which the guests strongly suspected to be dog."

Of Tunbridge Wells he says--"At present we see there a town which would, a hundred and sixty years ago, have ranked in population fourth or fifth among the towns in England. The brilliancy of the shops and the luxury of the private dwellings far surpa.s.ses anything that England could then show." At Bath "the poor patients to whom the waters had been recommended, lay on straw in a place which, to use the language of a contemporary physician, was a covert rather than a lodging. As to the comforts and luxuries to be found in the interior of the houses at Bath by the fashionable visitors who resorted thither in search of health and amus.e.m.e.nt, we possess information more complete and minute than generally can be obtained on such subjects. A writer a.s.sures us that in his younger days the gentlemen who visited the springs slept in rooms hardly as good as the garrets which he lived to see occupied by footmen. The floors of the dining-room were uncarpeted, and were coloured brown with a wash made of soot and small beer in order to hide the dirt. Not a wainscot was painted. Not a hearth or chimney piece was of marble. A slab of common freestone, and fire-irons which had cost from three to four shillings, were thought sufficient for any fireplace. The best apartments were hung with coa.r.s.e woollen stuff, and were furnished with rush-bottomed chairs."

Of London Macaulay says:--"The town did not, as now, fade by imperceptible degrees into the country. No long avenues of villas, embowered in lilacs and laburnum, extended from the great source of wealth and civilization almost to the boundaries of Middles.e.x, and far into the heart of Kent and Surrey." In short, there was nothing like the Avenue and the Fox Grove, Beckenham, in old times, and we who live there ought to be immensely grateful for our undeserved blessings. "At present," he says, "the bankers, the merchants, and the chief shopkeepers repair to the city on six mornings of every week for the transaction of business; but they reside in other quarters of the metropolis or suburban country seats, surrounded by shrubberies and flower gardens." Again, "If the most fashionable parts of the capital could be placed before us, such as they then were, we should be disgusted by their squalid appearance, and poisoned by their noisome atmosphere. In Covent Garden a filthy and noisy market was held close to the dwellings of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought, cabbage stalks and rotten apples acc.u.mulated in heaps at the thresholds of the Countess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of Durham."

Well, you will say, all this proves what a vast improvement we have achieved. Yes; but we must remember that Macaulay was writing on that side of the question. Are we not more self-indulgent, more fond of our flowers, villas, carriages, etc., than we need be; less hard working and industrious; more desirous of getting the means of indulgence by some short and ready way--by speculation, gambling, and shady, if not dishonest dealing--than our fathers were? I need not follow at further length Macaulay's description of these earlier times--of the black rivulets roaring down Ludgate Hill, filled with the animal and vegetable filth from the stalls of butchers and greengrocers, profusely thrown to right and left upon the foot-pa.s.sengers upon the narrow pavements; the garret windows opened and pails emptied upon the heads below; thieves prowling about the dark streets at night, amid constant rioting and drunkenness; the difficulties and discomforts of travelling, when the carriages stuck fast in the quagmires; the travellers attacked by highwaymen. He narrates how it took Prince George of Denmark, who visited Petworth in wet weather, six hours to go nine miles. Compare this to a journey in a first-cla.s.s carriage or Pullman car upon the Midland Railway, and think of the luxuries demanded by the traveller on his journey if he is going to travel for more than two or three hours: the dinner, the coffee, the cigar, the newspaper and magazine, etc., etc.

There is a pa.s.sage in the beginning of _Tom Brown's School Days_ in which the author ridicules the quant.i.ty of great coats, wrappers, and rugs which a modern schoolboy takes with him, though he is going to travel first cla.s.s, with foot-warmers. Then, in our houses, what stoves and hot- water pipes and baths do we not require! How many soaps and powders, rough towels and soft towels! Sir Charles Napier, I think, said that all an officer wanted to take with him on a campaign was a towel, a tooth- brush, and a piece of yellow soap. The great excuse for the bath is that if it is warm it is cleansing; if it is cold, it is invigorating; but what shall we say to Turkish Baths? Surely there is more time wasted than enough, and, unless as a medical cure, it may become an idle habit.

I have seen private Turkish Baths in private houses. What are we coming to? We used to be proud of our ordinary wash-hand basins, and make fun of the little saucers that we found provided for our ablutions upon the Continent. At the time of the great Exhibition of 1851 _Punch_ had a picture of two very grimy Frenchmen regarding with wonder an ordinary English wash-stand. "_Comment appelle-t'on cette machine la_," says one; to which the other replies, "_Je ne sais pas_, _mais c'est drole_." A great advance has been made in the furniture of our houses. We fill our rooms, especially our drawing-rooms or boudoirs, with endless arm-chairs and sofas of various shapes--all designed to give repose to the limbs; but I am sure they tend towards lazy habits, and very often interfere with work. Surely there has lately risen a custom of overdoing the embellishment and ornamentation of our houses. We fill our rooms too full of all sorts of knick-knacks, so much so that we can hardly move about for fear of upsetting something. "I have a fire [in my bedroom]

all day," writes Carlyle. "The bed seems to be about eight feet wide. Of my paces the room measures fifteen from end to end, forty-five feet long, height and width proportionate, with ancient, dead-looking portraits of queens, kings, Straffords and princ.i.p.alities, etc., really the uncomfortablest acme of luxurious comfort that any Diogenes was set into in these late years." Th.o.r.eau's furniture at Walden consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-gla.s.s three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs, a kettle, a frying-pan, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for mola.s.ses, and a j.a.panned lamp. There were no ornaments. He writes, "I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, and I threw them out of the window in disgust."

"Our cottage is quite large enough for us, though very small," wrote Miss Wordsworth, "and we have made it neat and comfortable within doors; and it looks very nice on the outside, for though the roses and honeysuckle which we have planted against it are only of this year's growth, yet it is covered all over with green leaves and scarlet flowers, for we have trained scarlet beans upon threads, which are not only exceedingly beautiful, but very useful, as their produce is immense. We have made a lodging room of the parlour below stairs, which has a stone floor, therefore we have covered it all over with matting. We sit in a room above stairs, and we have one lodging room with two single beds, a sort of lumber room, and a small, low, unceiled room, which I have papered with newspapers, and in which we have put a small bed. Our servant is an old woman of 60 years of age, whom we took partly out of charity." Here Miss Wordsworth and her brother, the great poet, lived on the simplest fare and drank cold water, and hence issued those n.o.ble poems which more than any others teach us the higher life.

"Blush, grandeur, blush; proud courts, withdraw your blaze; Ye little stars, hide your diminished rays."

"I turned schoolmaster," says Sydney Smith, "to educate my son, as I could not afford to send him to school. Mrs. Sydney turned schoolmistress to educate my girls as I could not afford a governess. I turned farmer as I could not let my land. A man servant was too expensive, so I caught up a little garden girl, made like a milestone, christened her Bunch, put a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler.

The girls taught her to read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her morals. Bunch became the best butler in the country. I had little furniture, so I bought a cartload of deals; took a carpenter (who came to me for parish relief) called Jack Robinson, with a face like a full moon, into my service, established him in a barn, and said, 'Jack, furnish my house.' You see the result."

Then what shall I say of the luxury of endless daily papers, leading articles, short paragraphs, reviews, ill.u.s.trated papers,--are not these luxuries? Are they not inventions for making thought easy, or rather for the purpose of relieving us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves.

May I also, without raising a religious controversy, observe that in religious worship we are p.r.o.ne to relieve ourselves from the trouble of deep and consecutive thought by surrounding our minds with a sort of mist of feeling and sentiment; by providing beautiful music, pictures, and ornaments, and so resting satisfied in a somewhat indolent feeling of goodness, and not troubling ourselves with too much effort of reason. A love of the beautiful undoubtedly tends to elevate and refine the mind, but the follies of the false love and the dangers of an inordinate love are numerous and deadly. It is absurd that a man should either be or pretend to be absolutely absorbed in the worship of a dado or a China tea cup so as to care for nothing else, and to be unable to do anything else but stare at it with his head on one side. With most people the whole thing is the mere affectation of affected people, who, if they were not affected in one way, would be so in another. Boswell was a very affected man. He says, "I remember it distressed me to think of going into another world where Shakespeare's poetry did not exist; but a lady relieved me by saying, 'The first thing you will meet in the other world will be an elegant copy of Shakespeare's works presented to you.'"

Boswell says he felt much comforted, but I suspect the lady was laughing at him. I like the "elegant copy" very much. It is certain that in this world there is a deal of rough work to be done, and I feel that, attractive and beautiful as so many things are, too much absorption of them has a weakening and enervating effect.

I have spoken of the luxuries of the table, of the house, of travel, and of a love of ease and beautiful surroundings. There are, however, some people who are very luxurious without caring much for any of these things. Their main desire appears to be to live a long time, and to preserve their youth and beauty to the last. For this purpose they surround themselves with comfort, they decline to see or hear of anything which they don't like for fear it should make their hair grey and their faces wrinkled, and their whole talk is of ailments and German waters.

Swift somewhere or other expresses his contempt for this sort of person.

"A well preserved man is," he says, "a man with no heart and who has done nothing all his life." Old ruins look beautiful by reason of the rain and the wind, the heat of August and the frost of January, and I am sure I have often seen in men--aye, and in women too--far more beauty where the tempests have pa.s.sed over the face and brow, than where the life has been more sheltered and less interesting.

But I must notice before I conclude this part of my subject one of the princ.i.p.al causes of a fatal indulgence in luxury, and that is a despairing sense of the futility of attempting to do anything worth doing, and of inability to strive against what is going on wrong. This is the meaning of that rather vulgar phrase, "Anything for a quiet life"; and this is the reason why with many people everything and everybody is always a "bore." Here, too, is the secret of that suave, polished, soft- voiced manner so much affected nowadays by highly-educated young men, and that somewhat chilly reserve in which they wrap themselves up. "Pray don't ask us to give an opinion, or show an interest, or discuss any serious view of things."

"For not to desire or admire, if a man could learn it, were more Than to walk all day, like the Sultan of old, in a garden of spice."

"Let us surround ourselves with every luxury; let us cease to strive or fret; let us be elegant, refined, gentle, harmless, and, above all, undisturbed in mind and body." "We have had enough of motion and of action we." "Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil." "Let us get through life the best way we can, and though there is not much that can delight us, let us achieve as much amelioration of our lot as is possible for us."

These, then, are some of the forms which luxury takes in the present century, and these are some of the outcomes of an advanced, and still rapidly advancing, civilization. These, too, seem to be the invariable accompaniments of such an advance. A very similar picture of Rome in the days of Cicero and Caesar is drawn by Mr. Froude in his _Caesar_. He says: "With such vividness, with such transparent clearness, the age stands before us of Cato and Pompey, of Cicero and Julius Caesar; the more distinctly because it was an age in so many ways the counterpart of our own, the blossoming period of the old civilization. It was an age of material progress and material civilization; an age of civil liberty and intellectual culture; an age of pamphlets and epigrams, of salons and of dinner parties, of sensational majorities and electoral corruption. The rich were extravagant, for life had ceased to have practical interest, except for its material pleasures; the occupation of the higher cla.s.ses was to obtain money without labour, and to spend it in idle enjoyment.

Patriotism survived on the lips, but patriotism meant the ascendancy of the party which would maintain the existing order of things, or would overthrow it for a more equal distribution of the good things, which alone were valued. Religion, once the foundation of the laws and rule of personal conduct, had subsided into opinion. The educated, in their hearts, disbelieved it. Temples were still built with increasing splendour; the established forms were scrupulously observed. Public men spoke conventionally of Providence, that they might throw on their opponents the odium of impiety; but of genuine belief that life had any serious meaning, there was none remaining beyond the circle of the silent, patient, ignorant mult.i.tude. The whole spiritual atmosphere was saturated with cant--cant moral, cant political, cant religious; an affectation of high principle which had ceased to touch the conduct and flowed on in an increasing volume of insincere and unreal speech. The truest thinkers were those who, like Lucretius, spoke frankly out their real convictions, declared that Providence was a dream, and that man and the world he lived in were material phenomena, generated by natural forces out of cosmic atoms, and into atoms to be again resolved."

Next I am going, as I promised, to consider those indulgences which become luxuries by excessive use, and in this I shall be led also to consider the effects of luxury. It has become a very trite saying that riches do not bring happiness; and certainly luxury, which riches can command, does not bring content, which is the greatest of all pleasures.

On the contrary, the moment the body or mind is over-indulged in any way, it immediately demands more of the same indulgence, and even in stronger doses. Who does not know that too much wine makes one desire more? Who, after reading a novel, does not feel a longing for another?

The rich and poor dog, as we all know, meet and discourse of these things in Burns's poem--

"Frae morn to e'en it's naught but toiling At baking, roasting, frying, boiling, An', tho' the gentry first are stechin, Yet e'en the hall folk fill their pechan With sauce, ragouts, and sic like trashtrie, That's little short of downright wastrie.

An' what poor cot-folk pit their painch in I own it's past my comprehension."

To which Luath replies--

"They're maistly wonderful contented."

Caesar afterwards describes the weariness and ennui which pursue the luxurious--

"But human bodies are sic fools, For all their colleges and schools, That, when nae real ills perplex 'em, They make enow themselves to vex 'em.

They loiter, lounging lank and lazy, Though nothing ails them, yet uneasy.

Their days insipid, dull, and tasteless; Their nights unquiet, lang, and restless, An' e'en their sports, their b.a.l.l.s and races, Their gallopin' through public places, There's sic parade, sic pomp, an' art, The joy can scarcely reach the heart."

After this description the two friends

"Rejoiced they were not men, but dogs."

An Italian wit has defined man to be "an animal which troubles himself with things which don't concern him"; and, when one thinks of the indefatigable way in which people pursue pleasure, all the while deriving no pleasure from it, one is filled with amazement. "Life would be very tolerable if it were not for its pleasures," said Sir Cornewall Lewis, and I am satisfied that half the weariness of life comes from the vain attempts which are made to satisfy a jaded appet.i.te.

There are many things which are not luxuries _per se_, but become so if indulged in to excess. Take, for instance, smoking and drinking. One pipe a day and one gla.s.s of wine a day are not luxuries, but a great many a day are luxuries. So lying in bed five minutes after you wake is not a luxury, but so lying for an hour is. The man who is fond precociously of stirring may be a spoon, but the man who lies in bed half the day is something worse. Then it must be remembered that a single indulgence in one luxury produces scarcely any effect on the mind or body, but a habit of indulging in that luxury has a great effect.

"The sins which practice burns into the blood, And not the one dark hour which brings remorse Will brand us after of whose fold we be."

I am surely right in noticing that the rich man is said to have fared sumptuously _every_ day, as though faring sumptuously might have no significance, but the constantly faring sumptuously was what had degraded and debased the man below the level of the beggar at his gate. I feel that to be luxurious occasionally is no bad thing, if we can keep our self-control, and return constantly to simple habits. There is something very natural in the prayer which a little child was overheard to make--"G.o.d, make me a good little girl, but"--after a pause--"naughty sometimes." It is the habit of being naughty which is pernicious. Can anyone doubt that the man who, on the whole, leads a hardy and not over- indulgent life will be more capable of performing any duty which may devolve upon him than a man who "had but fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life."

Sydney Smith, in his sketches of Moral Philosophy, notices that habits of indulgence grow on us so much that we go through the act of indulgence without noticing it or feeling the pleasure of it; yet, if some accident occurs to rob us of our accustomed pleasure, we feel the want of it most keenly. Speaking of Hobbes, the philosopher, he says that he had twelve pipes of tobacco laid by him every night before he began to write.

Without this luxury "he could have done nothing; all his speculations would have been at an end, and without his twelve pipes he might have been a friend to devotion or to freedom, which in the customary tenour of his thoughts he certainly was not."

In Fielding's _Life of Jonathan Wild_ Mr. Wild plays at cards with the Count. "Such was the power of habit over the minds of these ill.u.s.trious persons that Mr. Wild could not keep his hands out of the Count's pockets though he knew they were empty, nor could the Count abstain from palming a card though he was well aware Mr. Wild had no money to pay him."

If we are curious to know who is the most degraded and most wretched of human beings, look for the man who has practised a vice so long that he curses it and clings to it. Say everything for vice which you can say, magnify any pleasure as much as you please; but don't believe you can keep it, don't believe you have any secret for sending on quicker the sluggish blood and for refreshing the faded nerve.

There is no doubt that habits of luxury produce discontent, the more we have the more we want. The sin of covetousness is not (curiously enough) the sin of the poor, but of the rich. It is the rich man who covets Naboth's vineyard. I knew an old lady who had a beautiful house facing Hyde Park, and lived by herself with a companion, and certainly had room enough and to spare. Her house was one of a row, and the next house being an end house projected, so that all the front rooms were about a foot longer than those of the old lady. "Ah," she used to sigh, "he's a dear good man, the old colonel, but I should like to have his house--please G.o.d to take him!" This showed a submission to the will of Providence, and a desire for the everlasting welfare of her neighbour which was truly edifying; but covetousness was at the root of it, and a longing to indulge herself.

The effect of habits of luxury upon the brute creation is easily seen.

How dreadfully the harmless necessary cat deteriorates when it is over- fed and over-warmed. It may, for all I know, become more humane, but it becomes absolutely unfit to get its own living. What is more despicable than a lady's lap-dog, grown fat and good for nothing, and only able to eat macaroons! Even worms, according to Darwin, when constantly fed on delicacies, become indolent and lose all their cunning.

I will note next that habits of self-indulgence render us careless of the misfortunes of others. Nero was fiddling when Rome was burning. And upon the other hand privations make us regardful of others. In Bulwer's _Parisians_ two luxurious bachelors in the siege of Paris, one of whom has just missed his favourite dog, sit down to a meagre repast, on what might be fowl or rabbit; and the master of the lost dog, after finishing his meal, says with a sigh, "Ah, poor Dido, how she would have enjoyed those bones!" Probably she would have done so, in case they had not been her own. Of course we all know Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_, and that it is all about luxury. It is, however, very poetical poetry (if I may say so), and I don't know that it gives much a.s.sistance to a sober, prosaic view of the subject like the present. "O Luxury, thou curst by heaven's decree," sounds very grand; but I have not the least idea what it means. The pictures drawn in the poem of simple rural pleasures, and of gaudy city delights, are very pleasing; and the moral drawn from it all, viz., that nations sunk in luxury are hastening to decay, may be true enough; but what strikes one most is that, if Goldsmith thought that England was hastening to decay when he wrote, what would he think if he were alive now.

Well then, if the pleasures of luxury bring nothing but pain and trouble in the pursuit of them, to what end do they lead?

"Behold what blessings wealth to life can lend, And see what comfort it affords our end.

In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung, The floors of plaister, and the walls of dung; On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw, With tape-ty'd curtains never meant to draw; The George and Garter dangling from that bed, Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red;-- Great Villers lies--alas, how changed from him, That life of pleasure and that soul of whim.

Gallant and gay in Clieveden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love; No wit to flatter, left of all his store; No fool to laugh at, which he valued more; There victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame; this lord of useless thousands ends."

If these be the effects of luxuries, why is it that we continue to strive to increase them with all our might? I have already insisted that I am not speaking of such things as are beneficial to body and soul, but such as are detrimental. But it will be said, you are spending money, and to gratify your longings labourers of different sorts have been employed, and the wealth of the world is thereby increased. But we must consider the loss to the man who is indulging himself, and therefore the loss to the community; and further, that his money might have gone in producing something necessary, and not noxious, something in its turn reproductive.

In Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ is this pa.s.sage, "Johnson as usual defended luxury. You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury; you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it you keep them idle. I own indeed there may be more virtue in giving it immediately in charity, than in spending it in luxury." He was then asked if this was not Mandeville's doctrine of "private vices are public benefits." Of course this did not suit him, and he demolished it. He said, "Mandeville puts the case of a man who gets drunk at an alehouse, and says it is a public benefit, because so much money is got by it to the public. But it must be considered that all the good gained by this through the gradation of alehouse-keeper, brewer, maltster, and farmer, is overbalanced by the evil caused to the man and his family by his getting drunk."

Perhaps you will say, what is a man to do with his money, if he may not spend it in luxury? If, as Dr. Johnson says, and as we all of us find out occasionally, it is worse spent if given in charity, are we to h.o.a.rd it? No, surely this is more contemptible still. "What is the use of all your money," said one distinguished barrister to another, "you can't live many more years, and you can't take it with you when you go? Besides, if you could, it would all melt where you're going." This h.o.a.rding of wealth, this craving for it, is only another form of luxury, the luxury of growing rich. Some like to be thought rich, and called rich, and treated with a fawning respect on account of their riches; others love to hide their riches, but to hug their money in secret, and seem to enjoy the prospect of dying rich. I was engaged in a singular case some time ago, in which an old lady who had starved herself to death, and lived in the greatest squalor, had secreted 250 pounds in a stocking under the mattress of her bed. It was stolen by one nephew, who was sued for it by another, and all the money went in law expenses. If then we are not to spend our money upon luxuries, and if we are not to h.o.a.rd it, what are we to do with it if we have more than we can lay out in what is useful. I have not time (nor is the question a part of my subject) to discuss what should be done with the money hitherto spent in idle luxury. We know, however, that we have the poor always with us, and that we can always learn the luxury of doing good. In one way or another we ought to see that our superfluous wealth should drain from the high lands into the valleys; not indeed to make the poor luxurious, but to provide them with comfort, to give them health, strength, and enjoyment. I think then that if we are wise men, seeing that we are placed in a world of care, trouble, and hard work, from which no man can escape; and seeing that, upon the other hand, we are living in a country and in an age when we are surrounded with all that makes life pleasant and enjoyable, we shall endeavour to find out some mode of harmonizing these different chords. It need hardly be said how far removed luxury is from the spirit of Christianity, and from the life of its Founder; yet it may reverently be remembered that on more than one occasion He showed His tender regard for the weakness of human nature by stamping with His approval the pleasures of convivial festivity.

What then is the remedy against luxury? I would say shortly,--in work. A busy man has no time for luxury, and there is no reason why every man should not have enough to do, if he will only do it. And I am sure the same rule applies to the ladies, although a very busy man once wrote of his wife--

"In work, work, work, in work alway My every day is past; I very slowly make the coin-- She spends it very fast."