30 THE LUXURY QUESTION. 



As soon as those nations became rich they began to 

 decay. If this were the fifth century, and we were 

 writing history in the silent and melancholy streets of 

 Rome, we should probably propound a theory entirely 

 false, yet justified at that time by the universal ex- 

 perience of mankind. We should declare that nations 

 are mortal like the individuals of which they are com- 

 posed ; that wealth is the poison, luxury the disease, 

 which shortens their existence and dooms them to an 

 early death. We should point to the gigantic ruins 

 around, to that vast and mouldering body from which 

 the soul had fled, moralise about Lucullus and his 

 thrushes, recount the enormous sums that had been 

 paid for a dress, a table, or a child, and assure our 

 Gothic pupils that national life and health are only to 

 be preserved by contented poverty and simple fare. 



But what has been the history of those barbarians ? 

 In the dark ages there was no luxury in Europe. It 

 was a miserable continent inhabited by robbers, fetish- 

 men, and slaves. Even the Italians of the eleventh 

 century wore clothes of unlined leather, and had no 

 taste except for horses and for shining arms ; no pride 

 except that of building strong towers for their lairs. 

 Man and wife grabbled for their supper from the same 

 plate, while a squalid boy stood by them with a torch 

 to light their greasy fingers to their mouths. Then 

 the India trade was opened ; the New World was dis- 

 covered ; Europe became rich, luxurious, and enlight- 

 ened. The sunshine of wealth began first to beam 

 upon the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and gradually 

 spread towards the North. In the England of Eliza- 

 beth it was declared from the pulpit that the introduc- 

 tion of forks would demoralise the people and provoke 

 the Divine wrath. But in spite of sermons and sump- 



