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 passed 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
principal 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."