Sugar planter. [volume] (West Baton Rouge [i.e. Port Allen, West Baton Rouge Parish, La.]) 1856-1925, 1867-03-23
rAEISGruB NINETEENTH CENT?
HY DOWN A PEG.

The following is an extract from a Zee
inre on the Good Old Tines recently
delivered at Dumfries, by the Rev. Hugh
Stowell Brown, Of Liverpool:
Men did as wonderful intellectual feats
1000 and 5000 years ago as are done ID
the present time. IF it be true that man
was only an improved gorilla, we don't
find that he allowed a greater resem-
bIanee to it then than now for his W
part, he believed there were more mon
KEYS pow than then, and possibly the
gorilla might not 80 much represent the
race from which We sprang as the destiny
to which we are Fastening. Abraham be
believed to be as thoroughbred a gentle
man as any in the nineteenth century
Jacob as good q man of bushes as they
would find on the Liverpool Exchange :
while J~osephwas a statesman, and Moses
a legislator, worth a great deal more in
their time tan all our Lords, Commons
and Town Councils put together.
We think we do all things on a grand
scale, and a cockney will boast that the
largest theatre in London will hold 1000
people 80 1000 wonId scarcely have filled
the Coliseum Of Rome. St. Georges
Hall, Liverpool, is justly regarded as a
very magnificent building, but it was on
IL a very little bit of the baths of Diocle-
tian, which were nearly a quarter of a
mile square, the whole structure being a
very great deal larger than our Houses
of Parliament. Some moderns said if the
people of the ancient times could revisit
the earth, they would be very much as
tonished. He had no doubt they would,
but he would be sorry if they did in case
they should only laugh at US. Possibly
our great fathers who lived in that stupid
est of all centuries the-eighteenth-
would be astonished, but not the men of
1000 years ago.
We thought we had made great pro-
gress in sanitary science, but he believed
we were az a disadvantage compared
with the a~noients. In Rome alone there
were 500 public baths, and it never had
more than half the population of London.
They had hot, cold and vapor baths, aud
something like our Turkish bath, and,
what was better still, the people constant
ly used them. We boasted OF our civil
engineering, but it was questionable if it
had advanced much since the time the
Romans built their acqued acts, which
were carried over valleys, supported on
thousands Of arches, or tunneled for miles
through the solid rock while the greatest
scientific skill was required to give the
supply the proper grade.
There was a great deal of talk about
hat wonderful triumph Of genius, bring
ing the water of Loeb Katrine to Glas-
gov, but the quantity of water delivered
to every ~inhabitant of Rome was ten
times the water supply Of London. An
abundant supply of water was a special
characteristic Of ancient cities. We often
read OF the inhabitants of a besiegea city
suffering from hunger, but rarely, if ever,
from thirst. And there was no over
%crowding. Ninevah contained six hum
bred thousand inhabitants, but the pop
ulation of London was, for its area, five
times as dense as that Of Ninevah. The
ancients did not allow the dead to be bu-
ried within the walls of their cities-a
practice only beginning. to be abolished
with us. In point of cleanliness, also.
they were more careful than we are. He
read the other day of some people taking
cholera from washing clothes of persons
who had died of that malady. According
to the Mosaic law these clothes should
have been buried. Moses would not AL.
low people to live in houses that were un-
healthy, but it was no use turning the
people out, and allowing the house to
stand he knew people would live in it if
it remained. and so he said, down with
every stick and stone of it,"
In the matter of sewerage. the Romans
were superior to us. The city was built
on arches for the purpose of complete
sewerage, and there yet remains a sewer
lnRome SO wide that a cart loaded with
hay might pass through it. Excellent
and we'll contrived drains have been dis
covered in Nineyeh and other towns
The refuse of the cities was burned on
the plans. The hand looms of thirty
thousand years ago produced cloth of as
tine a quality, in point of texture. color
and style as we can produce, and the Hin
docs, n some of the Africans, knew the
process OF manufacturing iron and steel,
led them to look with contempt.
ana to reject as %rotton, the specimens of
these metels which we sent them. Tn all
these points the past compares favora.
bly with tho pro.o,