In training up their youth, their chief care, says Plutarch, was to make them good subjects, to fit them to endure the fatigues of long and tedious marches, and never to return without victory from the field. When they were twelve years old, they lodged in little bands, upon beds made of the rushes, which grew by the banks of the river Eurotas; and because their points were sharp, they were to break them off with their hands without a knife: If it were a hard winter, they mingled some thistle-down with their rushes to keep them warm (see Plutarch in the life of Lycurgus.) From all these circumstances it is plain, that no nation on earth was less effeminate; but being debarred from all the comforts of life, they could have nothing for their pains, but the glory of being a warlike people, inured to toils and hardships, which was a happiness that few people would have cared for upon the same terms: and, though they had been masters of the world, as long as they enjoyed no more of it, Englishmen would hardly have envied them their greatness. What men want now-a-days has sufficiently been shewn in Remark on line 200, where I have treated of real pleasures. Line 411. T' enjoy the world's conveniencies. That the words, decency and conveniency, were very ambiguous, and not to be understood, unless we were acquainted with the quality and circumstances of the persons that made use of them, has been hinted already in Remark on line 177. The goldsmith, mercer, or any other of the most creditable shopkeepers, that has three or four thousand pounds to set up with, must have two dishes of meat every day, and something extraordinary for Sundays. His wife must have a damask bed against her lying-in, and two or three rooms very well furnished: the following summer she must have a house, or at least very good lodgings in the country. A man that has a being out of town, must have a horse; his footman must have another. If he has a tolerable trade, he expects in eight or ten years time to keep his coach, which, notwithstanding, he hopes, that after he has slaved (as he calls it) for two or three and twenty years, he shall be worth at least a thousand a-year for his eldest son to inherit, and two or three thousand pounds for each of his other children to begin the world with; and when men of such circumstances pray for their daily bread, and mean nothing more extravagant by it, they are counted pretty modest people. Call this pride, luxury, superfluity, or what you please, it is nothing but what ought to be in the capital of a flourishing nation: those of inferior condition must content themselves with less costly conveniencies, as others of higher rank will be sure to make theirs more expensive. Some people call it but decency to be served in plate, and reckon a coach and six among the necessary comforts of life; and if a peer has not above three or four thousand a-year, his lordship is counted poor.