"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 classes
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