But if you ask me how we are to pay for this solidity and extra
expense, that seems to me a reasonable question; for you must
dismiss at once as a delusion the hope that has been sometimes
cherished, that you can have a building which is a work of art, and
is therefore above all things properly built, at the same price as a
building which only pretends to be this: never forget when people
talk about cheap art in general, by the way, that all art costs
time, trouble, and thought, and that money is only a counter to
represent these things.

However, I must try to answer the question I have supposed put, how
are we to pay for decent houses?

It seems to me that, by a great piece of good luck, the way to pay
for them is by doing that which alone can produce popular art among
us: living a simple life, I mean. Once more I say that the
greatest foe to art is luxury, art cannot live in its atmosphere.

When you hear of the luxuries of the ancients, you must remember
that they were not like our luxuries, they were rather indulgence in
pieces of extravagant folly than what we to-day call luxury; which
perhaps you would rather call comfort: well I accept the word, and
say that a Greek or Roman of the luxurious time would stare
astonished could he be brought back again, and shown the comforts of
a well-to-do middle-class house.

But some, I know, think that the attainment of these very comforts
is what makes the difference between civilisation and
uncivilisation, that they are the essence of civilisation. Is it so