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Why, then, did the ancient writers bewail luxury, inclination to pleasure, prodigality things all comprised in the notorious "corruption" in so much the livelier fashion than do moderns, although they lived in a world which, being poorer and more simple, could amuse itself, make display, and indulge in dissipation so much less than we do?
"'A prodigious display of luxury such as Europe could not rival had begun to characterize the manner of life of the possessors of the new and unexampled fortunes. Spectacles of gilded splendor, of royal pomp and boundless prodigality mocked the popular discontent and brought out in dazzling light the width and depth of the gulf that was being fixed between the masters and the masses.
It may be the prodigality of nature in respect to Flora's kingdom which has retarded the development of a love for flowers among the people of the island. Doubtless if Maréchal Niel roses, Jacqueminots, jonquils, and lilies of the valley were as abundant with us in every field as clover, dandelions, and buttercups, we should hardly regard them with so much delight as we do.
Between usury and prodigality, my child, is economy. Study, therefore, to acquire honorably a certain empire over Calyste. These are the last words on earthly interests that I shall ever utter, and I have kept them to say as we part; for there are times when I tremble in my conscience lest to save Calyste I may have sacrificed you.
Shabby curtailments, without repairing the breach which prodigality has made, discredit the husband, and bring the reproach of meanness on the wife. Retrenchments, to be efficient, must be applied to great objects.
This was readily agreed to, and from this auspicious marriage descended the famous family, which produced three of the Four Masters of Donegal. The virtue of hospitality was, of all others, that which the old Irish of every degree in rank and wealth most cheerfully practised. In many cases it degenerated into extravagance and prodigality.
Goldoni's grandfather was a native of Modena, who had settled in Venice, and there lived with the prodigality of a rich and ostentatious 'bourgeois. 'Amid riot and luxury did I enter the world, says the poet, after enumerating the banquets and theatrical displays with which the old Goldoni entertained his guests in his Venetian palace and country-house.
No doubt something of this was in the long and desperate fight which Scott waged with the creditors of the Ballantynes, who were also his own. The worst of the struggle is that it almost legalises a prodigality which to men always fixed on solid ground would be impossible.
Far into the golden west, past the islands that dotted the harbor, past the last villa of Sao Christovao, it burned and blazed among the hills, until shadowy peaks, that seemed but ghosts in the dim remoteness, burst resplendent on the view, gorgeous in their prodigality of color. Rio de Janeiro had mustered her children in crowds.
Here a mighty company of citizens, 'prentices, and others; and it makes me observe, that when I begun first to be able to bestow a play on myself, I do not remember that I saw so many by half of the ordinary 'prentices and mean people in the pit at 2s. 6d. a-piece as now; I going for several years no higher than the 12d. and then the 18d. places, though, I strained hard to go in then when I did: so much the vanity and prodigality of the age is to be observed in this particular.
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