The other has comparatively little pleasure in life.  He has scarcely reached manhood, ere he has exhausted its enjoyments.  Money has done everything that it could for him.  Yet he feels life to be vacant and cheerless.  Travelling does him no good; for, for him history has no meaning.  He is only alive to the impositions of innkeepers and couriers, and the disagreeableness of travelling for days amidst great mountains, among peasants and sheep, cramped up in a carriage.  Picture galleries he feels to be a bore, and he looks into them because other people do.  These “pleasures” soon tire him, and he becomes blase.  When he grows old, and has run the round of fashionable dissipations, and there is nothing left which he can relish, life becomes a masquerade, in which he recognizes only knaves, hypocrites, and flatterers.  Though he does not enjoy life, yet he is terrified to leave it.  Then the curtain falls.  With all his wealth, life has been to him a failure, for he has not known the Art of Living, without which life cannot be enjoyed.

It is not wealth that gives the true zest to life,—­but reflection, appreciation, taste, culture.  Above all, the seeing eye and the feeling heart are indispensable.  With these, the humblest lot may be made blest.  Labour and toil may be associated with the highest thoughts and the purest tastes.  The lot of labour may thus become elevated and ennobled.  Montaigne observes that “all moral philosophy is as applicable to a vulgar and private life as to the most splendid.  Every man carries the entire form of the human condition within him.”

Even in material comfort, good taste is a real economist, as well as an enhancer of joy.  Scarcely have you passed the doorstep of your friend’s house, when you can detect whether taste presides within it or not.  There is an air of neatness, order, arrangement, grace, and refinement, that gives a thrill of pleasure, though you cannot define it, or explain how it is.  There is a flower in the window, or a picture against the wall, that marks the home of taste.  A bird sings at the window-sill; books lie about; and the furniture, though common, is tidy, suitable, and, it may be, even elegant.

The art of living extends to all the economies of the household.  It selects wholesome food, and serves it with taste.  There is no profusion; the fare may be very humble, but it has a savour about it; everything is so clean and neat, the water so sparkles in the glass, that you do not desire richer viands, or a more exciting beverage.  Look into another house, and you will see profusion enough, without either taste or order.  The expenditure is larger, and yet you do not feel “at home” there.  The atmosphere seems to be full of discomfort.  Books, hats, shawls, and stockings in course of repair, are strewn about.  Two or three chairs are loaded with goods.  The rooms are hugger-mugger.  No matter how much money is spent, it does not mend matters.  Taste is wanting, for the manager of the household has not yet learnt the Art of Living.