e all the
rest of Europe to boot--or, speaking in scholar's language, as a _lucro
ponamus_. We say nothing of remoter gains. Such being the case, our mother,
the earth, being (as a whole) so incomparably poorer, could not in the
Pagan era support the expense of maintaining great empires in cold
latitudes. Her purse would not reach that cost. Wherever she undertook in
those early ages to rear man in great abundance, it must be where nature
would consent to work in partnership with herself; where _warmth_ was to
be had for nothing; where _clothes_ were not so entirely indispensable but
that a ragged fellow might still keep himself warm; where slight _shelter_
might serve; and where the _soil_, if not absolutely richer in reversionary
wealth, was more easily cultured. Nature must come forward liberally, and
take a number of shares in every new joint-stock concern before it could
move. Man, therefore, went to bed early in those ages, simply because his
worthy mother earth could not afford him candles. She, good old lady, (or
good young lady, for geologists know not[2] whether she is in that stage
of her progress which corresponds to gray hairs, or to infancy, or to "a
_certain_ age,")--she, good lady, would certainly have shuddered to hear
any of her nations asking for candles. "Candles!" She would have said, "Who
ever heard of such a thing? and with so much excellent daylight running to
waste, as I have provided _gratis_! What will the wretches want next?"

The daylight, furnished _gratis_, was certainly "neat," and "undeniable"
in its quality, and quite sufficient for all purposes that were honest.
Seneca, even in his own luxurious period, called those men "_lucifugae_,"
and by other ugly names, who lived chiefly by candle-light. None but rich
and luxurious men, nay, even amongst these, none but idlers _did_ live much
by candle-light. An immense majority of men in Rome never lighted a candle,
unless sometimes in the early dawn. And this custom of Rome was the custom
also of all nations that lived round the great pond of the Mediterranean.
In Athens, Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor, everywhere, the ancients went to
bed, like good boys, from seven to nine o'clock.[3] The Turks and other
people, who have succeeded to the stations and the habits of the ancients,
do so at this day.

The Roman, therefore, who saw no joke in sitting round a table in the dark,
went off to bed as the darkness began. Everybody did so. Old Numa Pompiliu