Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/37

Rh people's equivalent for the expensive feastings and revels of the grandees was found in kirmesses and carnivals. The forced sobriety of these uncultivated ages was interrupted by periodical debauches. No thought was taken of comforts. Except for the furnishings of the church and drinking vessels, there were few things of beautiful finish. Fashions did not change; there was no elegance and no variety in daily personal life, and workmen's wages were very small. Thus all was for display and nothing for comfort, and waste of men and means was the rule. Very different is the luxury of civilized, intelligent, and thoughtful people, which looks more to the comfortable or to elegance and artistic enjoyment than to magnificence and sumptuousness. It includes and penetrates the whole life, and extends in different degrees over all classes of the people. It is distinguished by the use of an infinitely greater variety of goods, and for each kind of an increasingly more considerable range of qualities. It adapts itself to democratic habits, which it has contributed to introduce. Instead of encumbering himself with a great number of domestics, clients, and parasites the prosperous citizen has around him only the number of people he requires for a good and prompt service; while, on the other hand, he has at his command independent outside workmen who develop into the honored class of artisans. Together with the immense permanent household installations, external distinctions and extensive private establishments of all kinds are given up, their places being supplied by those which may be used in common with the public.

The luxury of these prosperous and democratic periods reaches in multiplied and infinite gradations all classes of the people; then, supplying itself with durable objects and permanent arrangements, it becomes an accompaniment of the whole life. Its great characteristic is variety and elegance in necessary and usual objects. The extension of this luxury into all grades of the population is aided by such technical knowledge as permits the substitution of less costly goods for those which are more so, whereby things formerly enjoyed only by the wealthy are put within reach of persons of modest means: thus plate and white metal take the place of silver; electrotypes, of carved work; lithographs and photographs, of engravings and paintings; and figured papers, of tapestries. Cotton and silk mixed or silk waste give the illusion of silk; tulle and gauze, of lace. New substances, like nickel and aluminum, make it easy to possess watches, clocks, and the like, elegant in appearance and yet cheap. Improvements in the mechanic arts aid in this; and everything is imitated, even pearls and diamonds. There is nothing immoral in this sort of luxury, which varies, brightens,