* ¥792. the traveller. 25 
fare, that he has as nmuch reason to be satisfied with 
his lot in this world as I have. He might, perhaps, 
be unable to answer the arguments I brought to 
prove him happy, but he would not be convinced. 
It gives. me the spleen to hear people exclaim 
‘against the increase of luxury, and the alteration in 
“the mode of living now-a-days. The labourer lives 
as well as the farmer did forty years ago ; the far- 
mer as well as the man of little fortune ; and so on; 
-and is not this so much the better for them all? But 
all cry out most loudly against the rank immediate- 
ly below them, without recollecting that they have 
changed their own mode in nearly the same propor- 
tion. Labourers in the country do not live so well 
as those in London, where they have better wages. 
This is not surprising. But it is surprising that 
“people say that labourers in London have high wa- 
ges because they live well. It is mistaking the 
cause for the effect; and this is done every day. 
That beloved king, Henry rv. of France, withed to 
_ see the time when every man in his kiugdom fhould 
have a fowl in his pot on a Sunday, 
In the beginning of their empire, the Romans far 
exceeded in riches, magnificence, and’ refinement, 
_ any thing that modern ages can boast of. I have 
often wondered how they catched all those snipes and 
curlews that their emperors were so fondof. I forget 
how many thousand curlews brains Vitellius had in 
one difh at supper : he certainly paid well for them, as 
in lefs than a year he spent upwards of seven millions 
sterling on eating anddrinking. His brother Lucins 
VOL, x1. D + 
