Next I am going, as I promised, to consider those indulgences which become luxuries by excessive use, and in this I shall be led also to consider the effects of luxury.  It has become a very trite saying that riches do not bring happiness; and certainly luxury, which riches can command, does not bring content, which is the greatest of all pleasures.  On the contrary, the moment the body or mind is over-indulged in any way, it immediately demands more of the same indulgence, and even in stronger doses.  Who does not know that too much wine makes one desire more?  Who, after reading a novel, does not feel a longing for another?

The rich and poor dog, as we all know, meet and discourse of these things in Burns’s poem—­

   “Frae morn to e’en it’s naught but toiling
   At baking, roasting, frying, boiling,
   An’, tho’ the gentry first are stechin,
   Yet e’en the hall folk fill their pechan
   With sauce, ragouts, and sic like trashtrie,
   That’s little short of downright wastrie. 
   An’ what poor cot-folk pit their painch in
   I own it’s past my comprehension.”

To which Luath replies—­

   “They’re maistly wonderful contented.”

Caesar afterwards describes the weariness and ennui which pursue the luxurious—­

   “But human bodies are sic fools,
   For all their colleges and schools,
   That, when nae real ills perplex ’em,
   They make enow themselves to vex ’em. 
   They loiter, lounging lank and lazy,
   Though nothing ails them, yet uneasy. 
   Their days insipid, dull, and tasteless;
   Their nights unquiet, lang, and restless,
   An’ e’en their sports, their balls and races,
   Their gallopin’ through public places,
   There’s sic parade, sic pomp, an’ art,
   The joy can scarcely reach the heart.”

After this description the two friends

   “Rejoiced they were not men, but dogs.”

An Italian wit has defined man to be “an animal which troubles himself with things which don’t concern him”; and, when one thinks of the indefatigable way in which people pursue pleasure, all the while deriving no pleasure from it, one is filled with amazement.  “Life would be very tolerable if it were not for its pleasures,” said Sir Cornewall Lewis, and I am satisfied that half the weariness of life comes from the vain attempts which are made to satisfy a jaded appetite.

There are many things which are not luxuries per se, but become so if indulged in to excess.  Take, for instance, smoking and drinking.  One pipe a day and one glass of wine a day are not luxuries, but a great many a day are luxuries.  So lying in bed five minutes after you wake is not a luxury, but so lying for an hour is.  The man who is fond precociously of stirring may be a spoon, but the man who lies in bed half the day is something worse.  Then it must be remembered that a single indulgence in one luxury produces scarcely any effect on the mind or body, but a habit of indulging in that luxury has a great effect.