MODERN IDEAS OF 8ANTTABY ECONOMY. 



55 



more careful classes : they washed the arms and legs once a 

 day, and bathed the whole body once a week;* whilst the 

 marvellously luxuriant baths converted many of the best 

 citizens into idlers, and tended, amongst other things, to 

 demoralize the inhabitants. 



The importance of attention to wholesome food, and still 

 more, the pleasure arising from luxurious dishes, was known 

 to the ancients, but to a few only after all, as a general 

 diffusion of any information was not to be found in early 

 times. Even the delicate state of food cooked with softer 

 water was known, as the wells were often preferred, on 

 account of the hardness, I suppose, of the aqueduct water 

 running from the limestone hills. 



Their principles, however, were not very extensively carried 

 out ; their bed-rooms were closets, and their poor were nume- 

 rous and degraded to a degree that none of our towns can in 

 any way approach. 



Although purification is a distinctly practical act, we see it 

 taking a much wider range as an idea merely, and the act of 

 purification as a ceremony. Washing before the performance 

 of religious rites, seems to be a most natural action, but the 

 ceremony of washing became a mere form with most nations. 

 The priests of Egypt were rigorously clean, but their descend- 

 ants, keeping the forms even among the laity, are by no 

 means addicted to wholesome habits. The temples had always 

 a reservoir of water about them ; the mosques have water 

 still, which water is a filthy stagnant pool, dangerous to 

 health, but nevertheless a place where the form of washing is 

 undergone. The Jews also have, from necessity, probably, 

 adopted a mere form, dipping of the fingers and touching 

 the body becoming a substitute for immersion. It is, how- 

 ever, frequently a result of idleness, — a mode of finding an 

 excuse for an unpleasant act. Our Saxon forefathers had to 

 be drilled somewhat in a similar way to the Easterns, and 

 * Smith's Diet, of Chr. and Rom. Antiq. 



