Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1873-05-22
Past and Present.

About twenty years ago, says the
London Telegraph, Lord Macauley be-
ing ut that time member of Parliament
for Edinburgh, was breakfasting one
morning with an eminent statesman.
The morning newspapers were brought
in, and of the guests read aloud Che
announcement that on the previous
day the venerable President Routb, OF
Magdalen College, Oxford, had expir-
ed, in his hundredth year. Lord Mac.
auley received the intelligence in ST.
lence, and sat musing some moments
upon some train of thought suggested
by it to his mind. ''President Routh. -
he suddenly exclaimed-speaking more
as though he were thinking aloud than
addressing living hearers-stmieht
have shaken hands as baby with the
illustrious Fontenelle, who himself
died, aged 100 years, in 1857. Within
the lives OF Fontenelle and Routh, the
following events have happened. With
rapid and unhesitating auency the
greatest of English essayists then open.
ed the foodgates of his unrivalled
memory, to descant upon the changes.
material, moral and intellec. nal, which
civilization has witnessed within the
compass of two lives. From England
ne darted to France, from france to
the rest of Europe, from Europe across
the Atlantic to North and South Amer
lea, and then back to what he called
"the primeval continent of Asia, :"
CDR. Routh," he said, "might have
told us that he had seen man who
was present when Charles III. walked
with his toy spaniels in the mall; who
had shuddered at the scowl of Judge
Jeffreys; who had chatted and cores
Ponded with Madame de Sevigne; who
had seen La Valliere thrown aside by
the Grand MonarQue for Madame de
Montespan, and Montespan for Mad
anne. de Maintenon; who had taken
snuff from Lord Boiling broke's box,
and seen Swift cut asparagus in the
garden of Sir William Temple. The
authors, actors, statesmen, soldiers,
astronomers, navigators, inventors, and
men and women of note, who had
the close of the seventeenth
and the dawn of the eighteenth cent
uries, lived again under Lord Ma
caulay's plastic touch, as he rehearsed
the contemporaries of Fontenelle's
youth and early manhood. The vicar
OF Pershore has written to one of. our
contemporaries to say that he has an
old parishioner, with memory and
faculties unimpaired, who was horn in
1872, and remembers his grandmother.
who was born in 1897. 1T is possible.
says the Rev. Mr.. Bartlett, F." that he
might have heared from his grand
mother description of the
personal appearance of William
Ill.," What is such remin-
iscence compared with the possible
recollectioDs of FOntennelle2 As
child he might have remembered the
great storm which shook England and
France when Cromwell died on Sep
tember 3, 1658-might have been in
company with Milton and Cowley, and
heard the guns thunder across the
channel when Charles IL. landed at
Dover. Fontenelle and Routh are in.
deed two of the most suggestive lives
that within the records of history Lord
Macaulay could have taken for his
text. Both were born in q sphere of
society which made them likely to be
witnesses of any remarkable ev ent that
happened in France and England dur.
ing their boyhood. The second was
born just at the right moment for him
to take what Lucretius calls "the lamp
of life" from the hand of his pre1eces.
sor; nor is it likely that two such sue
cessive centenarians will again find
such commentator as Lord Macaulay
muslng aloud upon their experiences.