'You are right enough, Mr Scope,' cried Miss Bydel; 'for if singing and dancing, and making images, are ever so pretty, one should not pay folks who follow such light callings, as one pays people that are useful.' 'I hope not, truly!' said Mrs Maple. Mr Scope, thus encouraged, went on to a formal dissertation, upon the morality of repressing luxury; which was so cordially applauded by Miss Bydel; and enforced by sneers so personal and pointed against Ellis, by Mrs Maple, Miss Brinville, and Miss Sycamore, that Mr Giles, provoked, at length, to serious anger, got into the middle of the little auditory, and, with animated gesticulation, stopping all the attempts of the slow and prosing Mr Scope to proceed, exclaimed, 'Luxury? What is it you all of you mean by luxury? Is it your own going to hear singing and playing? and to see dancing and capering? and to loll at your ease, while a painter makes you look pretty, if you are ever so plain? If it be, do those things no more, and there will soon be an end to them! but don't excite people to such feats, and then starve them for their pains. Luxury? do you suppose, because such sights, and such sounds, and such flattery, are luxuries to you, they are luxuries to those who produce them? Because you are in extacies to behold yourselves grow younger and more blooming every moment, do you conclude that he who mixes your colours, and covers your defects, shares your transports? No; he is sick to death of you; and longing to set his pencil at liberty. And because you, at idle hours, and from mere love of dissipation, lounge in your box at operas and concerts, to hear a tune, or to look at a jump, do you imagine he who sings, or who dances, must be a voluptuary? No! all he does is pain and toil to himself; learnt with labour, and exhibited with difficulty. The better he performs, the harder he has worked. All the ease, and all the luxury are yours, Mrs Maple, and yours, Miss Bydel, and yours, ladies all, that are the lookers on! for he does not pipe or skip at his own hours, but at yours; he does not adorn himself for his own warmth, or convenience, but to please your tastes and fancies; he does not execute what is easiest, and what he like best, but what is hardest, and has most chance to force your applause. He sings, perhaps, when he may be ready to cry; he plays upon those harps and fiddles, when he is half dying with hunger; and he skips those gavots, and fandangos, when he would rather go to bed! And all this, to gain himself a hard and fatiguing maintenance, in amusing your dainty idleness, and insufficiency to yourselves.'