and if any doubts exist on this point, they will be dissipated by the illustrations of human nature, the startling examples of follies and caprice, extravagance and ostentation, with which M. Baudrillart's pages are filled to overflowing. Indeed, according to him, there has been no such. thing as a natural, simple, unsophisticated man or woman since our first parents. How often has not the human race been THIS book, purporting to be a history of luxury, is a history of manners and morals, modes of life and customs, arts, industry, commerce, and civilization, in all ages and all quarters of the world. The steps by which every race, nation, or people of note advanced from rudeness to refinement, or by which so many of them have retrograded to corruption or decay, represented as passing step by step from the are accurately traced. The amount of necessary to the useful, from the useful to the learning, ancient and modern, laboriously superfluous! Now, the primitive facts conamassed and judiciously applied, is im-tradict this. They attest that the superfluous mense; and the author, far from fancying has more than ever preceded the useful, and that he has done enough when he has that very often also the abuse has preceded supplied the materials for reflection, the reasonable use. Let us endeavor to fix, to pauses at frequent intervals to suggest inferences or draw conclusions; so that, by the time we have mastered his work, we are not only made familiar with the progress of luxury, but with the economical theories relating to it, the modes of treatment to which it has been subjected by legislators, the fierce diatribes it has provoked from the pulpit, and the curious speculations into which it has seduced philosophers. What is luxury? Is it an evil or a good? Is it to be relatively or positively considered or judged? Where are we to draw the line between necessaries, comforts, and superfluities? "Le superflu, chose très-nécessaire," is the well-known expression of Voltaire, and Senior lays down that a carriage is a decency to a woman of fashion, a necessary to a physician, and a luxury to a tradesman.† These seeming paradoxes may turn out very like truths, when we make due allowance for the influence of custom and fashion, when we bear in mind what a complex artificial creature is man as moulded by society: Histoire du luxe, Privé et Public, depuis l'Antiquité jusqu'à nos Fours (History of Luxury, Private and Public, from Antiquity down to our Time). Par H. Baudrillart, Membre de l'Institut. Deuxième Edition. Quatre Tomes. Paris, 1880. † Encyclopædia Britannica, art. "Political Economy." It has been said of a physician that he must begin where many professional men leave off - with a carriage and a wife. "By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people even of the lowest class to be without. All other things I call luxuries." (ADAM SMITH.) describe by some traits, what may be termed the elements of luxury amongst these primitive populations. We can even now indicate the result. It may be stated thus: The primitive man obeys the same instincts as the more cultivated. He is found vain, sensual, and as refined as he is permitted to be by the imperfect state of his means. Nudity adorns before clothing itself: pride is born before modesty. Primitive, Oriental, and Grecian luxury, form the subjects of the first volume; Roman and Byzantine, of the second; the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, of the third; modern luxury, of the fourth. The utmost we can attempt is a summary or selection of the salient points and most remarkable passages of each. We may pass rapidly over the chapters in which, reverting to his theory of the indigenous instinctive quality of luxury, the author accumulates instances to show that the rudest tribes and races, however sunk in ignorance and filth, are invariably found adorning or disfiguring their persons in some way, and even undergoing prolonged torture, to gratify their vanity. Thus, no later back than 1874, an English traveller, Dr. Comrie, came upon an indigenous people in New Guinea who did not know the use of iron, and were repulsively dirty, but had plenty of ornaments, or what they regarded in that light. Rousseau's doctrine, that disfigurement and distortion, in compliance with fashion or with the view of beautifying, are the fruit of civilization, is demonstrably unsound. The ladies of London and Paris, with is confirmed by the most recent work of hall supported by a hundred and thirtyfour columns as big as the column Vendôme and as high as the Obelisk. The Labyrinth," which Herodotus mentions as the principal wonder of Egypt, was an edifice of two stories, containing fifteen hundred rooms in each. "The upper chambers," he says, "I myself passed through and saw, and found them to excel all human productions." He was not admitted into the lower, which contained. the sepulchres of the kings who built the Labyrinth, and those of the sacred crocodiles. The monarchs of the Pharaonic dynasties, by their passion for building combined with boundless munificence, so vividly recall the founder of Versailles, that M. Renan speaks of them as so many prototypes of Louis Quatorze. These Egyptian autocrats also resembled the grand monarque in their profound indif. ference to the poverty and misery they entailed on their people. "Egypt was then, as now, the land of the doomed fellah, time immemorially employed in carrying stones upon his back, condemned to excessive toil in all shapes." pyramids and temples were all equally the product of compulsory labor. The That the Egyptians had arrived at an advanced stage of civilization is proved by the position of their women, who enjoyed an amount of independence rarely permitted to women in the East. It would seem from a story told by Herodotus that M. Baudrillart includes under the term luxe all the pomps and vanities, all the displays of grandeur and magnificence, all the creations of labor and capital, which | have not utility for their well-defined object-in a word, unproductive expenditure of every kind. Funeral ceremonies, they did not invariably make the best use tombs, and monuments, are comprehend- of it. A Pharaoh who had lost his sight ed, as well as banquets and palaces. En- was told that the recovery of it depended tering the East by Egypt, he points to on his finding a faithful wife. He adthe pyramids as examples of the most dressed himself first to his own, then to extravagant waste of life and treasure, others, and when, after a prolonged peand to the temples (which may be recon- riod of blindness, his eyes were at last. structed to the mind's eye from the ruins) unsealed by his meeting with the object of as throwing, for grandness of conception, his search, he assembled the numerous Versailles and the Escorial, St. Peter's dames who had been wanting in the healand St. Paul's, into the shade. The tem-ing virtue, and caused the whole of them ple of Karnak, which Mr. Fergusson to be burned. The history of Potiphar's terms "the noblest effort of architectural wife is repeated almost literally in the famagnificence ever produced by the mind mous papyrus of "The Two Brothers." of man," is computed to have been four times as large as Notre Dame; with a Les Premiers Hommes et les Temps Préhis From Egypt we are taken to Nineveh, the Nineveh of Sardanapalus, who died the death of an imperial epicure, after toriques. Par le Marquis de Nadaillac. Paris, 1881. dictating the inscription for his tomb: Vol. i., p. 113. "Sardanapalus, the son of Anacyndaraxus, built Anchiale and Tarsus in one day: | in Iran, the nucleus of the Persian emeat, drink, and lust: the rest is nothing." pire, was in opposition to the religious Strabo states that Nineveh was sixty spirit, instead of being, as in the other miles in circumference. In describing its countries we have been surveying, an embuildings and speculating upon its habits, anation from it. The luxury of the emSir A. H. Layard has exhibited the same pire, the empire of Xerxes and Darius, sort of ingenuity which is displayed by a retained the mundane character; and we Cuvier or a Professor Owen when he are again reminded of Louis Quatorze, arrives at the construction of an extinct when we are told that the household of animal from the study of a bone.* The the Persian monarch comprised fifteen broad result, founded on his explorations, thousand persons, and that the sole duty is that the Ninevites had made considera- of a number of high officers was to make ble progress in the decorative arts, al- his bed. Two immense buildings were though in public buildings and in most occupied by the queens and concubines. other respects they ranked considerably The royal table was supplied with the below Babylon, where Oriental magnifi- choicest eatables and drinkables for which cence reached its culminating point. The certain localities were renowned. The extent of the city may have been exager- water came from the Choaspes, and when ated by the ancient historians, but their his Majesty was on the move between the account of the vastness of the buildings cities which shared his presence, it was and the amount of precious metals lav-transported in silver vessels from the ished on the decorations is confirmed by modern discoverers. Nitocris, the spouse of Nebuchadnezzar, is described by M. Baudrillart as the soul of his works, and to her is attributed the design of the lake named after her, which served the double purpose of a fortification and a dam against the Euphrates when in flood. The famous hanging gardens are also attributed to female influence, to the longing of a Median princess, born in a more elevated region, for the coolness and shade of her native mountains. There were five of these gardens, about four English acres each, on terraces supported by columns and covered with mould thick enough for the largest trees to take root in it. One of the columns was hollow, and contained an hydraulic machine to raise the required quantity of water. In fact, the art of gardening, with all its modern appliances, including irrigation and the transplantation of grown trees, was practised in Babylon as effectively as in the Bois de Boulogne or Hyde Park. temple of Jupiter Ammon in the Libyan desert; the wine was brought from Chalybon in Syria; the cheese from Eolis. The glory of Persian architecture and decorative art was the palace of Persepo-. lis, built by Darius, with its marble staircase which ten horsemen could mount. abreast, and its clusters of columns which were compared to forests of lotus and palm-trees. We learn from Herodotus that of all days in the year, the one which the Persian celebrated most was his birthday, when the richer class caused an ox, a horse, a camel, and an ass to be baked whole, and so served up to them: "They eat little solid food, but abundance of dessert, which is set on table a few dishes at a time. They are very fond of wine, and drink it in large quantities. It is also their general practice to deliberate upon affairs of weight when they are drunk; and then, on the morrow, when they are sober, the decision to which they came the night before is put before them, and if it is then approved of, they act on it; if not, they set it aside. Sometimes they are. sober at their first deliberation, but in this case they always reconsider the matter under the influence of wine." In a note on this passage Sir Henry Rawlin1846. Monuments of Nineveh, 1849-53. Discoveries son states that "at the present day among the bons vivants of Persia, it is usual to The simplest form of worship in the open air was enjoined by Zoroaster; temples and images were expressly forbidden: whatever luxury therefore prevailed Nineveh and its Remains. By A. H. Layard, in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853. sit for hours before dinner, drinking wine | he generally is towards them, enjoins, and eating dried fruits, such as filberts, "Do not strike a woman even with a almonds, pistachios, melon-seeds, etc. A flower, if she had committed a thousand party, indeed, often sits down at seven o'clock and the dinner is not brought in till eleven." * "As rich as Croesus" has passed into a proverb, and the traditional belief in his wealth is confirmed by history. After a sacrifice to the Delphic god of a vast number of costly articles, he melted down a quantity of gold into one hundred and seventeen ingots of two and one-half and two talents each, besides causing a lion to be made in refined gold, weighing ten talents, and a female figure of the same material four feet and a half high. These, with two enormous bowls, one of gold and one of silver, were all sent to Delphi and deposited in the temple.† The paintings of antiquity, the masterpieces of Apelles and Zeuxis, are only known to us by description, and yet, from what has been recorded of them, we give the painters credit for having attained the highest qualities of their art. By a parity of reasoning we may assume from the literary monuments of India that, three thousand years ago, she had attained to well-nigh the highest point to which luxury can be carried by splendor, refine ment, and taste. In the Indian poem, the "Ramayana," dated thirteen hundred years before the Christian era, the author, describing the people of the Deccan under a feigned name, as Gulliver described the English court under the guise of the Lilliputian, speaks of the wonders of the vast city of the Troglodytes, adorned with plantations and gardens, crowded with palaces resplendent with jewels in flowery shades, and animated by the presence of nobles attired in the richest vestments and crowned with garlands. "Not far from thence rose the grand and vast dwellings of the chiefs of the Vanaras, dwellings like white clouds, likewise ornamented with splendid garlands, full of precious stones and riches, and containing treasures still more valuable, bevies of beautiful women!" These ladies were attired in the silks, embroidered muslins, and cachemires, which are at present so highly prized by their sisters of the West. But the position of the fair sex is somewhat difficult to define. Manon (700 B.C.), severe as The History of Herodotus; a New English Version, etc. By George Rawlinson, M.A. Assisted by Col. Sir Henry Rawlinson and Sir J. G. Wilkinson, F.R.S. Book I. ↑ Herodotus, book i., c. 50. faults." The following apostrophe is placed in the mouth of one of the dramatis persona in the "Ramayana :" "At thy aspect, we dream of modesty, of splendor, of happiness, of glory. We think of Lakchmi the spouse of Vishnu, or of Rati, the laughing companion of love. Which of these divinities art thou, O woman with the seducing girdle?" On the other hand, we must remember the bayadères or dancing girls, and there were provinces from which women were objects of export, as now or recently, from Circassia. M. Baudrillart states that King Djanaka, amongst presents to a neighboring prince, sent a thousand female slaves with rich necklaces or collars. The religious spirit found expression in the most imposing and variegated forms. The most ancient pagodas, constructed when Brahmanism was at its best, are profusely ornamented with sculptured images of remarkable elegance: nificent ruins of the temples of Ellora, which All commentary grows pale before the magmore than any other ruins confuse the human imagination. At the sight of these astounding edifices, which appear to date from an epoch anterior to Brahmanical civilization, the development of the plastic arts and of public religious luxury amongst the Hindoos receives the most striking attestation in the magnificence of these temples, in the infinite diversity of their details, and the minute variety of the carvings. Chinese civilization is one of the oldest in the world. Successive changes of dynasty have had little or no effect upon the manners and ways of life of the people, which would seem to have been stereotyped from the commencement of the empire; and, if we may trust Montesquieu, they have undergone five or six of the revolutionary changes which are commonly subversive of customs and institutions in the West. He says that the three first dynasties lasted longest because they were wisely governed, and that in general all of them began well. Good and bad emperors alternated as in Rome. China had her Trajan and her Antonines, as well as her Tiberius, her Caligula, and her Elagabalus. It is from the history of these last that we learn the nature and excess of the luxury which prevailed amongst them. Thus, Chean Sing, who reigned eleven hundred years before the Christian era, was famous for his cruelties and debaucheries, which were shared and encouraged by a wife or concubine named Ta-Ki. He built a palace of marble and kept a public table, which was the scene of drunken orgies, frequently terminating in crime. The greater vassals rose against him and, like another Sardanapalus, finding resistance vain, he caused a funeral pile to be constructed and threw himself upon it attired in his richest robes. The Chinese are a stationary race; with them it is literally only le premier pas qui coûte, for they never take the second. They have invention without imagination. Ingenious and industrious, they never aim at progress or improvement, and if they had been let alone, if the intruding spirit of European enterprise had not penetrated the barrier, they would fain have kept their country hermetically sealed against the foreigner to this hour. Most of the arts of life, many of the most important discoveries, including printing and gunpowder, were known to them when what are now the most advanced nations were in their infancy; and it is startling to think that merely by working out their own ideas, or giving them to be worked out by others, the Chinese might have changed the history of the world. There were two articles of luxury, however, which they were unable to keep to themselves, porcelain and silk. Specimens of China ware were brought to Europe by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, but the ceramic art, as since practised at Sèvres, Dresden, and Worcester, was unknown or neglected in Europe prior to the eighteenth. The manufacture of porcelain in China is dated a century before the Christian era, and it is recorded that about A.D. 1000 an emperor, some days after his accession to the throne, was respectfully requested to indicate the color of the vessels destined for his use. He wrote by way of rescript: "In future let them give the porcelain the azure tint of the sky after rain, such as it appears between the clouds." The artisans succeeded in carrying out his wish, and the sky-blue porcelain fetched fabulous prices whilst it lasted. The Roman writers speak of silk as a product of India, and it was unknown in Europe, except as an imported and rare article, prior to the sixth century; but the Chinese claim for an empress, named Siling-Chi, who lived B.C. 2650, the discovery of the art of breeding and domesticating silkworms, that of winding off their cocoons, and the fabrication of stuffs of silk. She was deified as the discoverer in the threefold capacity, and down to our time, according to M. Baudrillart, the Chinese empresses, attended by their maids of honor, have been in the habit of offering annual sacrifices to Siling-Chi, and have deemed it a duty to rear silkworms. The export of the seeds. of the mulberry-tree and the eggs of the worm was prohibited under pain of death, and the prohibitory law was rigidly observed for ages, till a Chinese princess betrothed to a king of Khotan, unwilling to dispense with silk, contrived to smuggle some of the seeds and eggs across the frontier in her hair. But the secret did not reach Europe till A.D. 552, when two monks of the order of St. Basil made a present to Justinian of some of the seeds and eggs, which they brought from China in the hollow of their pilgrim staves. Besides silk and porcelain, we are indebted to the Chinese for tea. Their bills of fare are varied and comprehensive, but none of their choicest dishes have found favor at European tables; not even the famous birds'-nest soup, so highly esteemed amongst them that not long since a rich widow was giving 4,000l. a year for an island, to ensure a constant supply of the delicacy. M. Baudrillart places the Chinese, as regards both art and cookery, below the Japanese, who in many points resemble them; but, far from being stationary, there is no country which has undergone within living memory so many sweeping changes as Japan, and we must revert to its previous history for illustrations of its characteristic luxury, civil and religious, as displayed by the Mikado, in whom the sovereign and pontiff were combined. Treated as a god, this personage was not allowed to touch the ground with his feet, and on public days he was bound to sit crowned and immovable. The slightest movement was supposed to portend the worst calamity. At his hours of repast, twelve tables were laid out, magnificently served. He chose one, to which the dishes of all the rest were removed, and he dined to the sound of a deafening crash of music. All the plate with which he was served was broken to pieces on the spot. His garments were worn by no one after him; whoever wore one of them would have found it as fatal as the shirt of Nessus. He was allowed twelve wives, one of whom took precedence as a queen. These ladies had magnificent robes, woven of gold and silver, so ample that it was no easy matter for them to walk. But |