his wants, placed his luxuries in idleness and sunshine, and seems to have relished these enjoyments with as much sensuality as Plato did his fine house and delicate fare.  Even he was more reasonable than those sectarians, who have prevailed in almost all religions, and who, believing that the Deity created man for the express purpose of inflicting upon him every species of torture, have inveighed against the most innocent gratifications, and have erected luxury into a deadly sin.  These theologians will not allow a man to eat his breakfast with a relish; and impute it as a vice if he smacks his lips, though it be but after a draught of water.  Nay, there have been some who have thought good roots and Adam’s ale too great luxuries for a Christian lawfully to indulge in; and they have purposely ill-cooked their vegetables, and mixed them with ashes, and even more disgusting things, to mortify the flesh, as they called it—­i.e. to offer a sacrifice of their natural feelings to the demon of which they have made a god.

Of late years, more especially, our ideas on this subject have much enlarged; and all ranks of Englishmen hold an infinity of objects as prime necessaries, which their more modest ancestors ranked as luxuries, fit only for their betters to enjoy.  This should be a matter of sincere rejoicing to all true patriots; because it affords indubitable evidence of the progress of civilization.  A civilized gentleman differs from a savage, principally in the multiplicity of his wants; and Mandeville, in his fable of the bees, has proved to demonstration that extravagance is the mother of commerce.  What, indeed, are steam-engines, macadamized roads, man-traps that break no bones, patent cork-screws, and detonating fowling-pieces, safety coaches and cork legs, but luxuries, at which a cynic would scoff; yet how could a modern Englishman get on without them?  It is perfectly true that our Henries and Edwards contrived to beat their enemies unassisted by these inventions.  Books, likewise, which were a luxury scarcely known to the wisdom of our ancestors, are a luxury now so indispensable, that there is hardly a mechanic who has not his little library:  while a piano forte also has become as necessary to a farm-house as a mangle or a frying-pan; and there are actually more copies printed of “Cherry ripe,” than of Tull’s husbandry.  Is not a silver fork, moreover, an acknowledged necessary in every decent establishment? while the barbarous Mussulman dispenses with knives and forks altogether, and eats his meal, like a savage as he is, with his fingers.  Nor can it be deemed an objection to this hypothesis, that the Turk, who rejects all the refinements of European civilization, excepting only gunpowder, esteems four wives to be necessary to a decent establishment; while the most clear-sighted Englishmen think one more than enough for enjoyment.  The difference is more formal than real.