CHAPTER I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AGES. PROLOGUES OF QUOTATIONS. "It is hard to find a whole age to imitate, or what century to propose for our example. Some have been far more approvable than others; but virtue and vice, panegyrics and satires, scatteringly to be found in all history, set down not only things laudable but abominable; things which should never have been, or never have been known. So that noble patterns must be fetched here and there from single persons rather than whole nations, and from whole nations rather than any one." "Almost every one when a state of civilization is spoken of, understands by that phrase our own state, and that of the other most refined European nations. No doubt we are more civilized than our ancestors, and than the mass of mankind at the present day. But I hope and trust, that our posterity five centuries hence will look on us as semibarbarians." ARCHBISHOP WHATELEY. "Political Economy." "The slow progress of the race in true morality, is to be ascribed to the consecrated crudities of former ages. The ideas of mankind, naturally progressive on this as on all other subjects, are continually called back to the venerated models, while they have an irresistible tendency to depart from it. To borrow an expressive phrase from a modern writer, they are "tethered to the stump of all superstitions." Thus the morality of a nation may long remain rude, vacillating, and inconsistent amidst the wonders of mechanical art, the achievements of physical science, and the refinements of taste." SAMUEL BAILEY. "Author of Essays on the Publication of Opinion. " B THE AGE AND ITS ARCHITECTS. www CHAPTER I. Simultaneous Development of Opinions and PeoplesChanges in Society, Mechanic and Organic-Influence of Great thoughts and Great Men-a New Age-Characteristics Science-Democracy-Difficulties in the way of British Civilisation-Industry, its Power in Developing the Life and Mind of a People-Achievements-GoldIron-The Blacksmith and the Warrior-Strength and Cunning-Averse view of English Society-Moral Progress--State of Ancient People and their CivilisationThe Origin and Progress of the English People-Taxation -The Statutes-condition of the Poor-Political Progress-Cities-Defoe on the Poor-Improvement of Social Condition-Curious Facts-Despairing views of Lord Jeffrey, contrasted with those of Mr. MacaulaySummary Review of the Ages of England-The Age of Commercial Developement-An Old English Fair-Age of Elizabeth-Age of Parties-Prospects of the Present Age of Action. To the student of history no circumstance in the movement of humanity, is more remarkable and note-worthy than the simultaneousness with which the life of nations and races develops itelf; there is apparently a wonderful and instinctive unanimity in the characteristics and thoughts of the ages, so that to a great degree an idea is not confined to a nation, but spread truth those changes are susceptible of a twofold delineation, if the social change is architectural, this results from the individual, and that is organic; the first influences are the result of building, the second of growth; the first are the result of plan, arrangement, and intention; the second arise from feeling, from faith, from strength growing out of a very sense of weakness and helplessness. The erection of society is like the erection of a building, it dates its origin from necessity, and it is in truth a series of results, every one of which is either a wise or an unwise adaptation; the social fabric rises like a minster or a mansion, it shows perhaps a variety of styles and compartments, and every part is the reflection or transcript of a different era of thought and life; institutions are like chapelries and rooms, and laws are like the bricks which compose the edifice; while these again are the crystalizing down into one tangible substance of the souls of former times, their strength, knowledge, wisdom, weakness, or virtue. But the growth of the soul is like the growth of the oak or the flower, it develops itself from within; the germination of the plant results from the sap, and this again results from the light, the heat, the mould, and a thousand imperceptible influences of nature: the oak must grow, it is the law of its nature, it must grow to be in unison with the influences within it and around it; the electric current, when it finds a tree unable to grow, its trunk and branches thickly scaled over each other in sturdy and obstinate conservatism, containing sap unable further to develop its life, turns that sap into steam, which thus by its expansive force take a terrible revenge, and tears and rends the oak in pieces: do we not read here a solemn symbol of the nature of revolutions, those capital punishments of nations. Society then may be described as a piece of architecture, for it is the objective side of human history; and if any persons demur on the term, as too mechanical, let them remember that the whole universe is a mechanism, is a buildingone thing is so set against another, that we dare not look at it in its organic structure and character alone; our bodily frames, our souls, our human institutions, our histories, all bear the evidence of rearing powers; all our modes of expression, by which we describe life as an endeavour or a discipline, humanity with all its societies as a progress or development, all these suppose that there is behind all the forms of the ages a wise master-builder, that all men are so many minor builders and erectors of scaffolding for the great purposes contemplated by the primal Architect. Ages are the framework or the theatre on which the shifting tribes of Adam play their parts; men and thoughts thus become architects, remoulding, reconstructing, beneath, as has been said, the sanction of some imperative and overruling dispensation. this view of things, history does not concern itself with the mere territory, the ground on which we move, it is not a questiou of space or of time, it has to do with the measure of the miles in space through which souls travelled, and the In |