The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-04-14
Tho Press tho Representative OF tho Ase-
Journalism Of the Past and the Present.


sion of our progress toward the ultimate
good We boast of our generation as though
it were new dispensation, a manifest bless
Ing Of God. Is it new dispensatiOn? Did
not our fathers feel as confident and as happy
in the possession Of their blessings as we,
are paaegyrcs upon umbrellas and stage
coaches and spectacles breathing as rare and
high pleasure as anything our modern
writers have written upon the telegraph or
the locomotive. Society has two forces, con-
servatism and progress. We move in cur
rents like the ocean. There is Gulf Stream
carrying heat and life far into the region Of
perpetual night, and giving fertility to regions
where the glacier had its home while other
currents sweep, cold and rushing, freighted
with the SHOWS of the Arctic seas. So we
have classes in our society which drift for
ever in the way Of advancement and growth;
who are satisfied with nothing that is, and
hope ever for something better that is to be;
who become radicals, iconoclasts disturbers
of the peace. We have others who dwell con-
stantly upon the memories Of the good old
times, and are comforted with nothing less
than century old
We remember writing of Defoe in which
the famous author mourned over the deca-
dence of England. There was no longer the
public spirit, the manly virtue, the high CHI
valric sense that had marked the Englishman
of the olden time. To this was added the pro-
phecy that in q very short time England would
fade out OF the nations. Well, this prophecy was
more than hundred and fifty years ago. 1t
was in the reign of the good Queen Anne.
| The England that Defoe eulogized was the
England of the Stuarts, of the Restoration,
when Charles ii. and his spaniels sat upon
the throne; when the plays of Aphra Behn
were performed before noble and brilliant
audiences; when Nell Gwynnes whim had
more power with the throne than the
entreaty of Clarendon, and when dicers
and vagabonds and tramps held car
nival in St. James and Whitehall. Yet
this was the England which Defoe regretted
with honest sorrow. He saw the world with
conservative eyes. Since his day England
has passed from step to step in the achieve
assurance but that the future will add as
largely to her comfort and power and fame as
the century and half which has ella sed
since the mourning of Defoe. In our own
country, although we have limited history,
men like Defoe are forever dwelling upon the
past. Oh, for the simplicity of the early fathers I!
Oh, for an hour of Washington Oh, for the
era Of good feeling when politicians were vir-
tuous and public men were honest and brave
Ga, for Andrew Jackson and his manly Ameri-
can character We have these laments daily.
Carl Schurz echoed them the other night
when he addressed Mr. Greeley and a large
crowd of curious and noisy democrats at
the Cooper Institute. From the cheers that
greeted his lamentations we have no doubt
that there were many who believed what he
said who regarded him as a true man mourn
ing for the past and the irreparable, and
not cunning adventurer making political
capital out of the emotions of his audience.
Yet these emotions have beauty and gravity
that should not be despised. 1t is pleasant to
feel that time will dim and color and throw a
soft tint over what now seems so harsh and
hard; that it will clothe the unseemly, glazing
cathedral stones with reverence and majesty
and the beauty that appeals to the soul and
finds expression in prayer; that there will
come time when Americans will see in Grant
not mere vulgar, drunken, stupid sot, who
stumbled into the Presidency very much as
Christopher Sly became Lord, but great
| captain worthy to be named and remembered
with Washington. We honor the feeling that
worships the past 1t comes from reverence.
Next to truth and love nothing is more
becoming to the soul than reverence. But
still we march on We worship the past and
welcome the future. When we mourn the
past and shrink from the future it is not well
with u.s. Far rather a cheerful buoyant,
hearty acceptance Of the day and its work,
and doing it. Nor should the variety of
our achievements content us. We shall
become, oh, friends and brothers, as much
''old fogies' to the merry boys who tease us
for pocket money as our fathers are to us.
1t may be sad, but we also are foreordained
governors" and sold gentlemen" and we
shall be discussed at clubs by downy-faced
Young men, and our allowances criticised and
disputed and irreverent nephews and cousins
will look wstfully at the HERALD column of
deaths and wonder If we shall "cut up fat. "
Young Harry Plantagenet was not the first
| prince who stole to his fathers bedside and
tried on the crown. If there are footprints
before us on these sands of time, surely there
are footsteps behind us. If we do not march
ahead we shall be trampled in the press. We
do mighty deeds, but those who come will do
mightier.
To take an immediate and IA miliar illustra-
ton, look at the HERALD. Fifty years ago
our fathers found the news in dingy, heavy
shnet 1yithnut uiuanit,L nntarrriso Or oriori