oo many people meddle
with the safety-valve when to practice economy is the part of both their
interest and their duty: their extravagance is a private misfortune and
a public danger.

* * * * *

So much for the utility of luxury.

We now wish to explain ourselves upon the question of esthetics--oh!
very modestly, and without trespassing on the ground of the specialists.
Through a too common illusion, simplicity and beauty are considered as
rivals. But simple is not synonymous with ugly, any more than sumptuous,
stylish and costly are synonymous with beautiful. Our eyes are wounded
by the crying spectacle of gaudy ornament, venal art and senseless and
graceless luxury. Wealth coupled with bad taste sometimes makes us
regret that so much money is in circulation to provoke the creation of
such a prodigality of horrors. Our contemporary art suffers as much from
the want of simplicity as does our literature--too much in it that is
irrelevant, over-wrought, falsely imagined. Rarely is it given us to
contemplate in line, form, or color, that simplicity allied to
perfection which commands the eyes as evidence does the mind. We need to
be rebaptized in the ideal purity of immortal beauty which puts its seal
on the masterpieces; one shaft of its radiance is worth more than all
our pompous exhibitions.

* * * * *

Yet what we now have most at heart is to speak of the ordinary esthetics
of life, of the care one should bestow upon the adornment of his
dwelling and his person, giving to existence that luster without which
it lacks charm. For it is not a matter of indifference whether man pays
attention to these superfluous necessities or whether he does not: it is
by them that we know whether he puts soul into his work. Far from
considering it as wasteful to give time and thought to the perfecting,
beautifying and poetizing of forms, I think we should spend as much as
we can upon it. Nature gives us her example, and the man who should
affect contempt for the ephemeral splendor of beauty with which we
garnish our brief days, would lose sight of the intentions of Him who
has put the same care and love into the painting of the lily of an hour
and the eternal hills.

But we must not fall into the gross error of confounding true beauty
with that which has only the name. The beauty and poetry of existence
lie in the understanding we have of it. Our home, our table, our dress
should b