that a considerable and encouraging improvement will be discovered in private and public morals. And let us ask, what is the judgment of the world to-day, its tone of thought and feeling, concerning war, duelling, slavery, intemperance, and the long catalogue of crimes and vices; concerning truth, justice, right,-compared with its opinion and feeling at any former period?

We sometimes hear it said that although knowledge may be more generally diffused now than it was two hundred, or one hundred, or fifty years ago, and the number of clever, dextrous and learned men may have increased, the human mind is nevertheless degenerating; that there are no very great men upon the earth, no philosophers, orators and poets comparable to those of "old times; and, limiting our references to this country, and to points of time which may be spanned by the memory of persons now living, we are assured that there are now no great doctors, no giant lawyers like those whose fame has been transmitted to us by the kindly hand of tradition. To all this we reply in the first place, it may well be doubted whether any age has produced more examples of true genius and great intellectual power than our own; and in the second place we may remark, that the standard of greatness has been raised so much,-a fact which of itself vindicates the claims of to-day,-that many who formerly passed for great wits, poets, philosophers, would if now living be undistinguished and perhaps unknown. We hear of great lawyers of other days, and of famous speeches which witched the world of our grandfathers. But let us consider: Would Parsons have been the giant unapproached and unapproachable had Shaw been his contemporary? Had Choate or Curtis flourished half a century ago would not other lights have "paled their ineffectual fires?" Indeed, we have hundreds in all the professions now undistinguished, who would have been famous men but that they were born "too late." It is equally true in the intellectual and physical worlds, that "distance lends enchantment to the view."

Formerly the most of the talent of the country was embraced in what were known as the learned professions, and to be a minister, a lawyer, or a doctor, was to be a

This is not the case now,

great man, the great man. either in fact or in the public estimation. Now men are respected as they are men, and not for their calling or profession. We add not an inch to any man's stature that he is a physician, a counsellor, or a parson. It contributes but little to a man's social position that he is of any of these professions, and it will contribute less by-andby. The strong man at the bench and the weak one on it are alike finding their own place. Now, learning, talent, great intellectual power, do not rush to these professions as formerly. Of the liberally educated a large proportion become merchants, mechanics and farmers. The unexampled progress made in our day in the useful arts, in material expedients, has opened new fields for talent and genius, and done much towards making all useful trades, callings and professions alike and equally respectable in the opinion of men, as they are in point of fact.

We have said that it may be doubted whether any age has produced more really great men than our own. The age is not able-no age is—to perceive and acknowledge its greatest men. The highest genius is he who can make the best use of all that the world-its history, its experience, its discoveries, its intellect-has furnished; who can make the highest generalizations from the broadest fields of facts. He is the mighty one who, holding in the hollow of his hand the worlds of the past and of the present, bodies and shapes from his possessions some great truth and sends it swelling along the centuries, and which only the ages to come can fully embrace and understand. Shakspeare and Bacon were not known and appreciated by their contemporaries as they are by us, who, through the impulse, in good part, which they gave to the world, have been raised to a position from which we may receive the full and unbroken rays which fell obliquely on our predecessors. Bacon understood this when he committed not merely his moral, but his intellectual reputation "to foreign nations and the after ages." The age in which Milton lived valued the copy-right of "Paradise Lost" at five pounds! Who shall say that there are no men among us greater than Shakspeare or Bacon, holding the same relation, in point of superiority, to our age which they did to theirs-not poets and philosophers per

haps like the former, nor philosophers and poets like the latter, but whether in closet, pulpit, shop, or countingroom,-thinking, writing, talking, doing,-poets and philosophers higher and wiser than any who have preceded them?

But is the world at a stand-still, or in course of retrogression, now at this time of day? Shall there be no improvement to, or upon, the steamboat, the railway, the telegraph, the daguerreotype, in the arts of production generally? in our modes of thought, our methods of inquiry, our systems ? Are our moral and spiritual speculations and acquisitions to cease?

We do not forget that often when we express confidence in the progress of modern civilization, our attention is directed to those civilizations which have been removed or superseded, as suggesting the probability, if not furnishing sufficient ground for the belief, that this too must pass away. And we are assured that the time for its disappearance will be that most nearly answering in its circumstances to the periods when its predecessors fell. It has ever been, we are told, freedom, glory, wealth, vice, barbarism at last, and in illustration and confirmation of this unvarying succession, we are called to notice the movement of society in the United States. It is easily assumed that the American people have passed the epochs of freedom and glory, are running through that of wealth, and that the reign of vice is in immediate prospect; that barbarism will come next there can, of course, be no doubt with these people, unless it shall be averted by help ab extra; unless some new and distinct force shall intervene to save society from the doom which civilization predicts and to which it tends. That the old civilization (and by these words we will hereafter be understood to include all that have preceded ours) should expire, was inevitable, and the new would meet a similar fate were it of the same character, were the same causes at work, and were there no forces of a counteracting tendency in operation. From the old civilization we do not infer a decadence of ours, but rather believe that as this is of different origin, lives in another element, and draws its sustenance from other sources, it would be unreasonable to suppose it must nevertheless share a kindred destiny. Egypt in her civilization may have possessed

arts unknown to us. Greece may have had poets, philosophers, orators, artists, captains, for aught we need to say, surpassing any of modern times. We may allow the names of Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, Phidias, Alexander, to be unrivalled-and what then? The greatest of these names, if indeed not all of them, flourished long before the culmination of Grecian civilization, as none will deny that the acknowledged greatest name in English literature "warbled his native wood-notes wild" long before our modern civilization is believed by any one to have reached its height. So from the most notable examples and teachings of history, we may infer the existence of a living, increasing civilization, although we should be compelled to believe that its greatest intellectual lights have gone out. We are not answered when we maintain the superiority of our civilization, by references to the Parthenon, the Temple of the Winds, the Pantheon, the magnificent streets, the stupendous aqueducts, or to any of the material and artistic wonders of former civilizations; or to their grandest contributions to the literature of the world,-the Banquet of Plato, the Iliad, the Eneid, the speeches against Philip, the speeches against Cataline. We must visit the houses and homes of the people. We would see the women and children, and learn the condition of the many. We desire to know something about the rights of persons, and, as the lawyers express it, the rights of things. We must have some understanding of the common, every-day notlons of morality among the people. We would like to examine the bases and active principles of their civilization, and would inquire concerning their laws, manners and religion. And when we find the religion of the old civilization to have been paganism, and the laws such as they may be presumed to have been from the following specimen taken from the Twelve Tables of the Roman law, we perceive no cause for apprehension from the history of a civilization with which such religion and laws were in perfect consistency and agreement:

"A father shall have the right of life and death over all his lawful children, and also of selling them."

"If the parties do not come to any agreement the creditor may keep the debtor sixty days in chains, and in the course of

that time shall present him for three successive fair days, at intervals of nine days, and publicly notify the debt. If there be more creditors than one, they may, after three days, divide the debtor and sell him beyond the Tiber."

"Let there be no marriage between the Patricians and the Plebians."

Looking at the old civilization, its history and essential properties, we perceive it was sure to decay from causes which do not affect ours. Under it great refinement, rare excellence in literature and the arts were possible, but dissolution was inevitable. Its freedom, glory, wealth, could "lead but to the grave." And let us believe that the civilization in which they were found was rather designed to prepare the way for one higher and better than to foreshadow its doom. It was built upon the principles and in the spirit of force. The best cultivated nations of antiquity were engaged in constant wars with other nations, and in the subjugation of tribes and peoples. The consequences were luxury and corruption on the side of the few, poverty and slavery with their usual vices on the part of the many. The spirit of force governed between the patrician and the plebian; in the laws, in the customs, manners, social relations, and in religion. Conquest supplied wealth, and wealth begot luxury, wastefulness and corruption. The productions of labor were reduced by the removal of men from the field to the army. The patrician became effeminate, the plebian brutal.

This civilization, as it succeeded other conditions of society, overlaid other strata and formations which, by the laws of growth and progress, were the necessary preparation for its advent, was itself to be succeeded by a formation higher and nobler.

In the fulness of time an Anointed was sent upon the earth to deliver a gospel and illustrate its truth and beauty by a perfect example. This gospel was destined to work a complete revolution in human affairs. It spoke of the brotherhood of man, of the dignity of human nature. It recognized especially the condition and claims of the poor, and to impress the duties which these implied firmly and deeply upon all minds, we find, in the language of Burke, that "when the Saviour appeared in human form, he did not appear in the form of greatness and majesty,