with all
the leading features of his life; the very soul of this vast genius put
in action: this is more than biography!--it is living as with a
contemporary!

FOOTNOTES:

[256] The room is a small wainscoted apartment in the second floor,
commanding a pleasant view.

[257] The above inscription is a fac-simile of that upon the glass.
The word _fifth_ in the third line has been erased by Pope for want
of room to complete it properly. It is scratched on a small pane of
red glass, and has been removed to Nuneham Courtney, the seat of the
Harcourt family, on the banks of the Thames, a few miles from
Oxford.

[258] Harrewyns published, in 1684, a series of interesting views of
the house, and some of the apartments, including this domed one. The
series are upon one folio sheet, now very rare.

[259] Rubens was an ardent collector, and lost no chance of increasing
his stores; in the appendix to Carpenter's "Pictorial Notices of
Vandyke" is printed the correspondence between himself and Sir D.
Carleton, offering to exchange some of his own pictures for antiques
in possession of the latter, who was ambassador from England to
Holland, and who collected also for the Earl of Arundel.

WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONESELF?

The political economist replies that it is!

One of our old dramatic writers, who witnessed the singular extravagance
of dress among the modellers of fashion, our nobility, condemns their
"superfluous bravery," echoing the popular cry--

"There are a sort of men, whose coining heads
Are mints of all new fashions, that have done
More hurt to the kingdom, by superfluous bravery,
Which the foolish gentry imitate, than a war
Or a long famine. _All the treasure by
This foul excess is got into the merchants',
Embroiderers', silkmen's, jewellers', tailors' hands,
And the third part of the land too!_ the nobility
Engrossing _titles only_."

Our poet might have been startled at the reply of our political
economist. If the nobility, in follies such as these, only preserved
their "titles," while their "lands" were dispersed among the industrious
classes, the people were not sufferers. The silly victims ruining
themselves by their excessive luxury, or their costly dress, as it
appears some did, was an evil which, left to its own course, must check
itself; if the rich did not spend, the poor would starve. Luxury is the
cure