Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/72

60 They wished to enjoy life, not earn bread, and above all, to live lavishly and carelessly.

In this country the useful has always been given the second place, often the third.

Not that their highest interest lay in an ideal reproduction of life, as did that of Italy during the Renaissance, when it was absorbed by its eternal art. No; the end here was to make life itself a festival which a great lord, a really grand seigneur, gave to other gentlemen, great and small, and their ladies.

Hospitality is a more essential feature in Polish life than in that of any other country. Elsewhere people are hospitable only when they are bored: here they are hospitable without being bored; to shrink from showing hospitality here is accounted snobbery; to shrink from accepting hospitality, even on a grand scale, is also snobbery, for it shows that you value it in money.

In ancient Poland even war was festive. In war the Polish knights wore large wings on their cuirasses, real ostrich wings on their saddles, and, as a matter of course, plumes in rich variety.

And how beautiful and rich was the Polish costume in peace! It can scarcely be maintained that their mode of dress was ever practical, but what glittering luxury it displayed! What wonderful splendour in sashes, with their gold and silver embroidery, which were wound many times about the waist! What a delicate and superior sense of beauty in their silk embroideries! The man who wore such a sash about his waist had a constant impression of happiness, fulness of life, prosperity. This was not tinsel, like so much of the French finery of those days, but solid and enduring splendour.

The individual mighty man of this people did not live for himself alone, was not reserved, and the whole race was like him. We have only to consider two such incidents as these: that Poland opened its doors to the Jews in the Middle Ages, and that John Sobieski liberated Vienna from the Turks; two rare incidents in the history of Europe of religious liberality and political chivalry.