Luxury may be defined as indulgence in such costly
pleasures as magnificent equipages and furniture, splendid dresses. Exquisite food
and old wine. The rich Romans at the end of the Republic and under the Empire
were famous or notorious for their extravagant luxury. They spent fabulous sums
on sumptuous banquets and drank wine out of gold cups studded with precious
stones. The wealth they had acquired by the conquest of the world was
squandered in the purchase of magnificent villas, Greek work of art. Babylonian
carpets, and slaves carefully education to minister to all their pleasures.
In the Europe of the early Middle Ages. exception Ital.,
the rich had few opportunities of wasting much money on luxuries, as owing to
want of commerce, every nation had to content itself for the most part with its
own productions. So the great nobles in England, France and Germany spent their
surplus wealth on the building of strong castles and the maintenance of
numerous retainers. But with the spread of commerce at the time of Renaissance,
a taste for luxury was developed, such as we see exemplified in the famous
Field of the Cloth of Gold. Where many French nobles are said to have carried
their manors on their backs.
Owing to the increase of trade and progress in the
mechanical arts, the desire for comfort has become much more general during the
last two or three centuries: and many things that in the fifteenth century were
regarded as luxuries are now necessaries of life, which even the poorest laborer
could not forego without feeling a sense of deprivation. In England and in
America we hear of immense sums of money being spent on the pleasures of the
intellect and of the senses, and the cultivation of luxury in the nineteenth
century probably exceeds the most lavish expenditure of all previous periods of
the world’s history. Inside the strong castles of the old English barons there
was far less of comfort than is to be found in a middle-class house at the
present day. The wealthy and refined successors of the hardy warriors who
carried the red cross of England into the heart of France. Live in a style of
luxury that would be condemned as effeminacy, if it were not often combined
with love of field sports and great political energy.
Let us consider for a moment Pinyin Castle, one of
the many palaces of the English aristocracy lately described in successive
numbers of the Illustrated London News. Although built in the nineteenth
century, in external appearance it resembles on old Norman Castle. But the
interior is as different as possible from anything ever dream of by the old
Norman nobles. The walls of the dining- room, on which hang priceless paintings
of the Old Masters, are on lamented with a magnificent carved dado, and the
ceiling is all harrow and gold. Still grander is the drawing-room, the fan-shaped
arches of the ceiling of which are described as glistening with gold. The walls
of crimson and gold in this room are so magnificent that the finest pictures
would only obscure their magnificence. Next to the drawing-room is a small room
called the ebony room because the fireplace is made of black marble, the
furniture of black wood? And magnificent mirrors are set in black arches. The
costly tapestry on the walls is in different shades of brown, and the richly
embossed ceiling is white. In rooms such as these the aristocracy of England
assembles on festive occasion, when the splendor of the jewelers and dresses
worn by the ladies eclipses the magnificence of the surroundings in which they
are displayed. Their robes are of the costliest silk and velvet, and sparkle
with diamonds and rubies.
Out-of-doors the same luxury prevails. The wife of
are American millionaire lately bought a mantle of black fox skin that cost
£2,800. And the Empress of Russia is said to possess a fur cloak five times as
valuable. The carriages in London, Paris and New York, move so smoothly, on
finely constructed springs, that their occupants do not feel slightest jerk as
they speed through the crowded streets. On the railways the wealthy travel in
Pullman cars. Which are repetitions on wheels of their own luxurious drawing? Rooms
and they cross the ocean in steamers like floating places. k the great hotels
which they patronize on their travels they can but every comfort and
convenience that modem science and art have. Invented. They bathe in marble
baths, dine and read by the mellow light of electric lamps, and are saved by
hydraulic lifts from the trouble of walking up and down stairs.
Such are some of the broader and more striking
features of modern European luxury; but
they give only a faint idea of the immense variety of the luxuries that wealth
can now purchase in the great centers of western civilization. The best way to realize
this great variety, which distinguishes modern European luxury from the. Luxury
of ancient times and from Oriental luxury. is carefully t observe the shops of
London, or even, failing that, so much of the reflected glory as many appear in
the display of goods made by the European shops in the great commercial cities.