Middletown transcript., 1886-09-23
THE CHANGES OF HALF. a
CENTURY, 10

THE CHANCES OF HAGEA
.H CENTURY. no
After an interval Of more than fifty
years I propose taking second look
at some parts of Europe. This win
give my readers Of the Atlantic. as
we'll as the writer, vacation to which
we both seem entitled, It is a Rip
Van WinkIe experiment which / am
promising myself. The changes
wrought by half a century in the
countries I visited amount almost to
a transformation. tileft the England
of william Tie FsufEbI Of tie Duke
Of Wellington, Of Sir Robert Peel
the France Of Louis Philippe,
of Marshal Ssoult, Of Theirs, of
Guizot. went from Manchester to
Liverpool bY the new railroad, the
only one I saw in Europe. 7 looked
upon England from Che box tof
stage.coach, upon France from the
coupe Of a diligence, upon Italy from
the chariot of q vetturino. The bro
ken windows Of Apsley House were
still boarded up when ! was in Lon
don The asphalt pavement wasnot
laid in Paris. The Obelisk of Luxor
was lying in its great boat In the
Seine, as remember it. sIsdida not
see itserected ; it must have been q
sensation to have looked on, the engi-
neer standing underneath, so as to be
crushed byitifit disgraced him by
falling in the process. AS for the dy-
nasties which. havsd ioverlaid each
other like DR.. ,Schliemann's Trojan
cities, there IS no need Of morslizing
over q history which, instead Of Finis
is constantly ending in What nextf
With regard toehangss IN the gene
raj conditions Of society and the ad-
vance in human knowled ed5ggss 4. think for
one moment what fifty years have done.
I have often imagined myself escort
ing gysomes wise mansof the past otolour
Saturday Club, where we ofsen have
distinguished strangers as oar guests.
Suppose there sat BY mel viii not
say Sir Isaac Newton, for he has been
tooloug away from u.s. but that other
great man, who Professor Tyndall
names as next to him in Intellectual
stature, as he passes along the line of
master minds Of bis country from the
days of Newton TO our own--Dr.
Thomas Young, who died IN 1929.
Would he or be the listener, If we
were side by side /? However humble
I might feel in such q presence, ]
should be 30 clad in the grandeur Of
the new discoveries. inventions, ideas,
I had to impart to him, that should
seem to myself like the ambassador Of
an emperor i should tell him of the
ocean steamers, the railroads that
spread themselves like cobWebs over
the civilized and halfcivilized portions
of the earth, the telegraph and the
telephone, the photograph and the
spectroscope. IIshould hand him a
paper with the morning news ffom
London to read by the electric Eight,
I should startle him with d friction
match, I should amaze him with the
incredible truths about an@sthesia;
should astonish him with Gthe5qlater
conclusions Of geology, should nelec-
trify him by the fully developer doc
trine Of the correlation Of forces,
should delight him with the cell-doc-
trine, / should confound him with. the
revolutionary apocalypse of Darwinism.
AllIthis change in the aspects posi-
tions, beliefs Of humanity since the
time Of DR.. Young's death, to the date
of my own graduation from College!
IL oughtto consider myself highly
favored to have lived through sucha
half century. But it, seems to me
that in walking the streets Of London
and Paris, I shall revert to my stu
dent days, and appear to myself IKE
a relic ola former generation, Those
who have been born into the qinheri-
tahceI6 6f the new civilization feel very
differently about ii from those who
Have lived their way into it, TSithe
young and those approaching : middle
age all these innovations in life and
Thought are as natural,as much a
matter5aof courseqas thessair they
breathe; they formaa part 0fs.the
framework Of their qintelligencsyitof
the skeleton about which their 6ieh-
cal life il organized: TO men and
women Of more than threescore they
aresxternal aceretions. like the gshell
of . mpllosk, the jeiuted plates ef1an
aftiedlate. Oliver Wendall Holmes,
in The Atlantic for July. 'le ter i
Omaha Dame--So yon decide to
come west this season instead of going
to the seashore as usual. Philadel-
phia Girl (languidly)-Yes, it was the
only thing Icould do. Not tired of
old ocean, are you I" " Well, no; but
SO many people not in my set persist
in bathing in it. Omaha World