In many towns the aqueduct was substituted for the public fountain and the street-pump.

Ceilings which in the old days would have been dingy with soot and dirt, were now decorated with ornamental frescoes.

Baths were more commonly resorted to; there was less need to use perfumery for the concealment of personal odors.
An increasing taste for the innocent pleasures of horticulture was manifested, by the introduction of many foreign flowers in the gardens--the tuberose, the auricula, the crown imperial, the Persian lily, the ranunculus, and African marigolds.

In the streets there appeared sedans, then close carriages, and at length hackney-coaches.
Among the dull rustics mechanical improvements forced their way, and gradually attained, in the implements for ploughing, sowing, mowing, reaping, thrashing, the perfection of our own times.
MERCANTILE INVENTIONS.

It began to be recognized, in spite of the preaching of the mendicant orders, that poverty is the source of crime, the obstruction to knowledge; that the pursuit of riches by commerce is far better than the acquisition of power by war.