if some p. 55accident occurs to rob us of our accustomed pleasure, we feel the want of it most keenly. Speaking of Hobbes, the philosopher, he says that he had twelve pipes of tobacco laid by him every night before he began to write. Without this luxury “he could have done nothing; all his speculations would have been at an end, and without his twelve pipes he might have been a friend to devotion or to freedom, which in the customary tenour of his thoughts he certainly was not.” p. 55 In Fielding’s Life of Jonathan Wild Mr. Wild plays at cards with the Count. “Such was the power of habit over the minds of these illustrious persons that Mr. Wild could not keep his hands out of the Count’s pockets though he knew they were empty, nor could the Count abstain from palming a card though he was well aware Mr. Wild had no money to pay him.” If we are curious to know who is the most degraded and most wretched of human beings, look for the man who has practised a vice so long that he curses it and clings to it. Say everything for vice which you can say, magnify any pleasure as much as you please; but don’t believe you can keep it, don’t believe you have any secret for sending on quicker the sluggish blood and for refreshing the faded nerve. There is no doubt that habits of luxury produce discontent, the more we have the more we want. The sin of covetousness is not (curiously enough) the sin of the poor, but of the rich. It is the rich man who covets Naboth’s vineyard. I knew an old lady who had a beautiful house facing Hyde Park, and lived by herself with a companion, and certainly had room enough and to spare. Her house was one of a row, and the next p. 56house being an end house projected, so that all the front rooms were about a foot longer than those of the old lady. “Ah,” she used to sigh, “he’s a dear good man, the old colonel, but I should like to have his house—please God to take him!” This showed a submission to the will of Providence, and a desire for the everlasting welfare of her neighbour which was truly edifying; but covetousness was at the root of it, and a longing to indulge herself. p. 56 The effect of habits of luxury upon the brute creation is easily seen. How dreadfully the harmless necessary cat deteriorates when it is over-fed and over-warmed. It may, for all I know, become more humane, but it becomes absolutely unfit to get its own living. What is more despicable than a lady’s lap-dog, grown fat and good for nothing, and only able to eat macaroons! Even worms, according to Darwin, when constantly
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