I cannot examine in this place the question concerning the association between luxury and the Fine Arts. It is most difficult to state the exact truth on so complicated a subject in a few words. Some of the French are artistic, and many of them are luxurious, so that art and luxury may be seen together in France; but they are not inseparably connected, and for my part I regret the accidental association. Nothing, in my opinion, can be nobler than the combination of artistic grandeur in the things which affect the mind with austere simplicity in those that touch the body. In the magnificent old French cathedrals you have the most sublime and the most costly architecture above you and around you, with a rush-bottomed chair to sit upon, like the chairs in the humblest cottage. In many an art gallery you have priceless treasures on the walls; but neither curtains for the windows nor carpets for the floor. The most precious engravings are often framed with a beading of plain oak. The masterpieces of sculpture keep their dignity best in rooms that are simple to severity. It is evident, therefore, that the fine arts are absolutely independent of luxury; but, on the other hand, it is also true that from the richness of the materials employed in some of the fine arts a luxurious people may be tempted to turn them to a lower use. Painting may be made luxurious by the charm of colour, and also by sensuous or sensual suggestions in the work itself. Besides these attractions, the modern spirit of luxury likes a picture as an excuse for decorating a room with a massive and glittering gilt frame.[65] The marble of a statue is also an agreeable thing to look upon, because it is smooth to the touch, and so soon as we descend to the minor arts we find great numbers of precious and pleasant materials which may be used as hangings or wrought into exquisite furniture. The love of beautiful objects, comprised in French under the convenient generic term _bibelot_, is strongly characteristic of the present stage of ultra-civilisation. The true sign of it is the search for the exquisite in all things. To live on dainties and be always surrounded with softness, to have plenty of amusing and expensive toys, is the end of the luxurious modern French development of the human faculties. How familiar, how commonplace, this life of luxury has become, and how many far higher and more estimable things are sacrificed to it! It is worse even than English comfort; because it takes a false appearance of superior refinement. Only after the first novelty has passed away do we discover that it is essentially vulgar and dull, and truly the vanity of vanities. CHAPTER IV MANNERS [Sidenote: National and Class Codes.]