The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-12-24
From the New York Globe.

From the New York Globe
 = AyING demonstrated the myth or N1 Antony and Cleopatra by snow
 ing that the lady was oio'
 scrawnv and big-nosed. and having dem onstrated that Theodore Roosevelt IS
 merely an American edition of Augustus,
 Prof. Guglielmo Ferrero kept up the good
 work of revising old beliefs by shoWlns
 that if Nero should come to New fors today he would be overwhelmed With
 charein to discover that he had been
 mere amateur in luxury. If the eminent
 Italian historian Is right, Roman eating
 nlaces were dingy holes compared with our .lobster palaces" and Roman waste
 and profusion niggardly when contrasted
 with the recklessness to which we nave
 attained The chief freedom Of whlcn
 the modern world so loudly boasts is free
 dom in vice-escape from the espionage
 and the scrutiny by the public of what
 is now regarded as private behavior that
 prevailed up to 200 years ago.
 The most luxurious Roman did not have
 a steam yacht, or an automobile, or cleo
 tric lights. Devoted as he was to the
 pleasure of the table, many things were
 unknown to his stomach that the poorest
 now enjoy Fond as he was of raiment the basements of the department stores are crowded with fabrics he never had a chance to buy. Elagabalus was never housed as comfortably as the average citizen today. Subject the inmates of our almshouses to conditions that were the best the Caesars knew and they would deem themselves i'll treated. Vast has
 been the multiplication of the objects on which human desire can expand itself.
 By summing up what we have and which the ancients did not there is no difficulty in establishing that moderns are the more luxurious.
 But in no true sense can a comparison be made. There is no common standard. | It Is a familiar saying that the luxury of one generation becomes the comfort of the next and the necessity of third. In its evil aspects luxuriousness being mat ter of the spirit rather than of the thing physically enjoyed We can never tell whether the vice is growing or lessening. Except for brief intervals of flesh cruel | fxion, when asceticism and puritanism | is the fashion. the truth probably is that | every people has been as luxurious as | the facilities at its command permitted l 1t to be. No race ever long ate black bread when it could get white, or wore l coarse clothes when it could get fine. | Haircloth has never been a uniform that ! mankind willingly put on. But if the | test be whether or not the fortunate of the world are as ruthless as their for | expense of their fellow creatures, there has been vast change and improvement. Either we do not as eagerly desire the | good things of life, or to some degree we
 have conquered cruelty, for less than for merly do the luxuries of the few imply 1 the misery of the many
 1 It is true that sumptuary laws have
 largely disappeared. But at times sump-
 tuary laws established a prohibition that did not prohibit. Moreover, something may be said for the proposition that not a little of the reason for these laws has 1 disappeared. Professor Ferrero may call | the freedom that has been established 8 | freedom in vice, and that men today are
 more indifferent to the checking of social | disease. But the change can be described | in another way-it can be said that ex-
 perience has demonstrated that human
 nature can be trusted more than was once | deemed possible, and that 1t Is perceived that excessive schoolmastering and cen
 sorship aggravated the very evils they
 were intended to prevent. To the average