has practised a vice so long that he
curses it and clings to it. Say everything for vice which you can say,
magnify any pleasure as much as you please; but don't believe you can
keep it, don't believe you have any secret for sending on quicker the
sluggish blood and for refreshing the faded nerve.

There is no doubt that habits of luxury produce discontent, the more we
have the more we want. The sin of covetousness is not (curiously enough)
the sin of the poor, but of the rich. It is the rich man who covets
Naboth's vineyard. I knew an old lady who had a beautiful house facing
Hyde Park, and lived by herself with a companion, and certainly had room
enough and to spare. Her house was one of a row, and the next house
being an end house projected, so that all the front rooms were about a
foot longer than those of the old lady. "Ah," she used to sigh, "he's a
dear good man, the old colonel, but I should like to have his
house--please God to take him!" This showed a submission to the will of
Providence, and a desire for the everlasting welfare of her neighbour
which was truly edifying; but covetousness was at the root of it, and a
longing to indulge herself.

The effect of habits of luxury upon the brute creation is easily seen.
How dreadfully the harmless necessary cat deteriorates when it is over-
fed and over-warmed. It may, for all I know, become more humane, but it
becomes absolutely unfit to get its own living. What is more despicable
than a lady's lap-dog, grown fat and good for nothing, and only able to
eat macaroons! Even worms, according to Darwin, when constantly fed on
delicacies, become indolent and lose all their cunning.

I will note next that habits of self-indulgence render us careless of the
misfortunes of others. Nero was fiddling when Rome was burning. And
upon the other hand privations make us regardful of others. In Bulwer's
_Parisians_ two luxurious bachelors in the siege of Paris, one of whom
has just missed his favourite dog, sit down to a meagre repast, on what
might be fowl or rabbit; and the master of the lost dog, after finishing
his meal, says with a sigh, "Ah, poor Dido, how she would have enjoyed
those bones!" Probably she would have done so, in case they had not been
her own. Of course we all know Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_, and that
it is all about luxury. It is, however, very poetical poetry (if I may
say so), and I don't know that it gives much assistance to a sober,