The Cairo bulletin. [volume] (Cairo, Ill.) 1872-1878, 1873-05-27
PAST AND PRESENT.
a PANORAMIC REVIEW ny
MACaC LAY-THE CONNECT.
ING LINKS With THEHIs.
TORlC PASr-TWOH hun.
DIED YEARS OF
PERSPECTIVE

About twenty ycare ago, Lofd Macao
! icy, beng At that time meiubsr Of Psriia.
msht Tor Edinburg, was br,akfasting one
morning with on eminent staLcsmsn The
morning newspapers were brought in, aud
one Of tue guests reud aloud the announce.
ment That On The previous day lhs venera.
Die President Boutb, Of Msgdsl, Colicr.,
oxford, had expired ~ has one huouredln
year. Lord Macaulay received The intelli-
sence IN silence, aud sat musing for few
moments upon some train of thought sug.
gested by II to his mind. President
kouth, he suddenly exclaimed -speakiny
more a. though be were thinKibg aloud
than addressing living hssrers-" might
have shaken hands ssA baby with the il-
lustrlOus fontenclle, who himself died
aged one hundred years, ia 1867. Within
the lVes OF Fontenslle and Routh, the fol.
lowing events have happes-d With
rnp'd and Undertaking auency, the great
LET OF English esisyists then opened the
hood-gAtes OF HE unrivalled memory to
descAnt upon the chsnges, material, moral
and intellectual, which civilization bnd
witnessed within tie compass Of two
lives.
From England he darted TO France. and
from France, 10 the rect of Europe, and
rom Europe across the Atlantic to North
and South Ameri:s, and then back TO
Sha he called the primeval continent If
Asia. "Dr. Ruth, he said. might have
told US that he had seen a man who WAS
present when Charlie III. walked with his
10Y spaniels in the Mail who had sbuc.
dered at the scowl Of Judge J-frrey.; who
hsd chaited and corresponded with
INMATE de S"vigne; who had seen La
Nalliere thrown aside by the Grand Mon
.que for Madame de Mnn,espan: and
Mohte-pan for Madame do N.int.non
who had taken snuff from Lord BoIiap.
trokes box, and seen Swift cut asparagns
IN the garden Of Sir William TempIe"
Ihe authors, actors, statesmen soldia.s
astronomers, navigstors, inventors, and
men and women Of note, who had ilu.
lated Tho close OF the --s-utecutu anu the
dawn OF the eighteenth centuries, lived
>eain under Lord M-caulsy's plastic
ouch, a. be rehesrsed the conten pories of
Funtenelles youth and early manhood.
rhe Vicar OF Pershure has written TO one
of our contenpori.s To say that be has an
Did parsshioner, with memory and iacul-
ties unimparcd, who WAS born in 1894,
and remembers his grandmother, who was
horn in 1881 1t is possible" says the
rev, MT DhTtielt, 'tDht no might nave
heard from bis gAandmoi her descrip tion
e the personal appearance Of William
III
What ia such a reminscence compared
with the possible recollections If Fcnten-
lie ? As child be might have renem-
bered the great storm which shook Eng
land and France when Cromwell died on
September 3, l658-might have been in
company with Nj ton Cowley, and heard
the guns thunder across the channel hen
Charles III. landed nj DIVER. Fontenelo
and Routh are indeed two OF the most sug-
Festive lives that within the records Of
history Lord Mscsulsy could have taken
Cor his text. Both were born 10 sphere
of society which made them likely to be
witnesses Of any remarkably event that
happened in France and England during
their boyhood. he second was horn
inst at the right moment for him To take
what Lucretius calls "the lamp IF life"
from the hand Of his predecessor; nor Ia II
likely that two successive centenarisns will
sgsin find such commentator as Lord
Mscaulsy mnsin9 aloud upon their ex.
marian cas- Il IOndnn Telaprapb