Waterbury evening Democrat., 1890-08-25
ABOUT ExTRAVAeANcE.
ia the Past Money Was Spent More Reck-
leasIy Than at Present.

lessly Than at Present.
Pessimism- continually charges wo-
full extravaganza upon our age. The
fathers, 1t says, were compelled to
scrape and to save, mindful of every
dollar, and content if only meager
balance remained to their credit at the
end of the year. We are rapidly drifting
into enervating luxury, it affirms, and
our costly buildings, and paintings,
sculpture, our comfortable modes OF
life, and our reckless way of consider
ing public and private expenditures are
indicative of an unhappy mental and
even moral degeneration. There is
much apparently in support OF such
statement We are weary of prosaic
living, in great degree, and long for
release to a civilization eminently COM
Portable If not luxurious, and, at least,
Interesting" as Matthew Arnold would
say. Not so far beneath our greed
for monetary prosperity, indeed,
existing as a potent motive to accumu-
lation, is the natural desire for better
| social condition. We take half-holiday
now and then to study great pictures or
| statues; we read more than ever good
| books and magazines, and we live in
| better houses. All this is necessary to
proper development, and yet we must
confess a certain tendency to eXtraVa-
| gance, careless and dangerous. Still,
however reckless we may be, it is per-
haps a consolation to know that we are
less extravagant than the people of GER
tain other times. We pay our thou
| sands for our houses, our pictures and
our sculpture, and yet do not equal the
| Greeks and the Romans in expenditure.
Attalus offered Nicias sum equal to
| S75, 600 for painting. and the artist re-
fused him, preferring to present the
picture to his country as gift Julius
Cesar bought of Timomachus, the Athe'
MAN painter, two figures for eighty tai
ents, or 500, 900, and Apelles re-
ceived some $685. for a portrait
of Alexander welding a thunder
bolt. Indeed. he himsef paid 49,
900 for the pictures with which
Protogenes had adorned his studio, and
which had proved unstable, and this
chiefly as an encouragement to a strug
CLING fellow-artist Some of our public
lecturers command excellent salaries
assuredly, but none of them would de
mand any thing like the Sig, 900 which
Athens paid to Herodotus for reading
his history at the Panathenaic festival
Socrates, it is said, received almos
$4,000 for one grafton, and, probably
even DR.. Depew could be engaged at {
figure more reasonable. We all remem
Der that Virgil was rewarded most gen
erously for his few lines on the youn!
Marcellus, and Suetonius says that Asel
Illus Sabinus received four hundred thou
sand sesterces-some S17,0O0-for "A dia
logue between a mushroom, a cabbage
a thrush and an oyster. 1t cost the cit,
of the Averni in Gaul a round million
and a half for a statue of Mercury, ant
this expenditure seems to have BEEF
not especially eXorbitant for the age.
hundred other examples of ancient eX
travagance might easily be found, bu
all would point to the same genera
truth, that our recklessness of eXpendi
ture has not yet equaled the reckless
ness of the past. But we must remem
Der that a national lapse into luxuriou
idleness is followed always by nationa
decay, and keep our eyes wide open t
the pleasant but dangerous tendency @
the present. Providence JoUrnal