remark will apply to almost all the other classes.  Luxury, so far as it reaches the poor, will do good to the race of people; it will strengthen and multiply them.  Sir, no nation was ever hurt by luxury; for, as I said before, it can reach but to a very few.  I admit that the great increase of commerce and manufactures hurts the military spirit of a people; because it produces a competition for something else than martial honours,—­a competition for riches.  It also hurts the bodies of the people; for you will observe, there is no man who works at any particular trade, but you may know him from his appearance to do so.  One part or other of his body being more used than the rest, he is in some degree deformed:  but, Sir, that is not luxury.  A tailor sits cross-legged; but that is not luxury.’  Goldsmith.  ’Come, you’re just going to the same place by another road.’  Johnson.  ’Nay, Sir, I say that is not luxury.  Let us take a walk from Charing-cross to White-chapel, through, I suppose, the greatest series of shops in the world; what is there in any of these shops (if you except gin-shops,) that can do any human being any harm?’ Goldsmith.  ’Well, Sir, I’ll accept your challenge.  The very next shop to Northumberland-house is a pickle-shop.’  Johnson.  ’Well, Sir:  do we not know that a maid can in one afternoon make pickles sufficient to serve a whole family for a year? nay, that five pickle-shops can serve all the kingdom?  Besides, Sir, there is no harm done to any body by the making of pickles, or the eating of pickles.’

We drank tea with the ladies; and Goldsmith sung Tony Lumpkin’s song in his comedy, She Stoops to Conquer, and a very pretty one, to an Irish tune, which he had designed for Miss Hardcastle; but as Mrs. Bulkeley, who played the part, could not sing, it was left out.  He afterwards wrote it down for me, by which means it was preserved, and now appears amongst his poems.  Dr. Johnson, in his way home, stopped at my lodgings in Piccadilly, and sat with me, drinking tea a second time, till a late hour.

I told him that Mrs. Macaulay said, she wondered how he could reconcile his political principles with his moral; his notions of inequality and subordination with wishing well to the happiness of all mankind, who might live so agreeably, had they all their portions of land, and none to domineer over another.  Johnson.  ’Why, Sir, I reconcile my principles very well, because mankind are happier in a state of inequality and subordination.  Were they to be in this pretty state of equality, they would soon degenerate into brutes;—­they would become Monboddo’s nation;—­their tails would grow.  Sir, all would be losers were all to work for all—­they would have no intellectual improvement.  All intellectual improvement arises from leisure; all leisure arises from one working for another.’