The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1886-07-10
THE CHANGES OF HALF A CENTURY.

THE CHANGES OF HALF A CENTURY.
After an interval of more than fifty
years, propose taking second look at
some parts of Europe. This will give
my readers of the atlantic, as well as
the writer, vacation to which we
both seem entitled. 1t is Rip Van
Wrinkle experiment which 1 am promis-
ing myself. The changes wrought by
half century in the countries visited
amount almost to transformation. 1
left the England of William the Fourth,
Of the Duke Of Wellington, Of Sir Rob-
ert Peel; the France of Louis Philippe,
of Marshal Soult, of Theirs, of Guizot.
/ went from Manchester to Liverpool
by the new railroad, the only one saw
in Europe. 1 looked upon England
from the box Of stage coach, upon
France from the coupe of diligence,
upon Italy from the chariot of vet
turino. The broken windows of Apsley
House were still boarded up when 1
was in London. The asphalt pavement
was not laid in Paris. The Obelisk of
Luxor was lying in its great boat in the
Seine, as remember it. did not see
it erected it must have been a sensa-
ton to have looked on, the engineer
standing underneath, so as to be crush
ed by it if it disgraced him by falling in
the process. AS for the dynasties which
have overlaid each other like DR.. Schlie-
mann's Trojan cities, there is no need
Of moralizing over history which in
stead of fms, is constantly ending with
what next +?
With regard to the changes in the
general conditions of society and the
advance in human knowledge, think
for one moment what fifty years have
done. 1 have often imagined myself
escorting some wise man of the past to
our Saturday Club, where we often
have distinguished strangers as our
guests. Suppose there sat by mel
will not say Sir Isaac Newton, for he
has been too long away from us, but
that other great man, whom Professor
Tyndall names as next to him in intel
lectual stature, as he passes along the
line of master minds of his country,
from the days of Newton to our own
DIR. Thomas Young, who died in 1929.
Would he or I be the listener, if we
were side by side? However humble 1
might fe el in such presence, 1 should
be so clad in the grandeur of the new
discoveries, inventions, ideas, / had to
impart to him that 1 should seem to
myself like the ambassador of an en-
peror. should tell him of the ocean
steamers, the railroads that spread
themselves like cobwebs over the civil
lied and half civilized portions of the
earth, the telegraph and the telephone,
the photograph and the spectroscope. l
should hand him paper with the
morning news from London, to read by
the electric light, / should startle him
with a friction match, l should amaze
him with the incredible truths about
an@sthesia, should astonish him with
the later conclusions of geology, I
should electrify him by the fully devel-
oped doctrine of the correlation of
forces, 1 should delight him with the
cell doctrine, 1 should confound him
with the revolutionary apocalypse of
Darwinism. All this change in the as
poets, position, beliefs, of humanity
since the time of DR.. Young's Death
the date of my own graduation from
college!
ought to consider myself highly fa-
vored to have lived through such half
century. But it seems to me that in
walking the streets of London and
Paris 1 shall revert to my student days,
and appear to myself like a relic of a
former generation. Those who have
been born into the inheritance of the
new civilization feel very differently
about it from those who have lived
their way into it. To the young and
those approaching middle age, all these
innovations in life and thought are as
natural, as much a matter of course, as
the air they breathe they form a part
of the framework of their intelligence,
of the skeleton about which their men,
tai life is organized. To men and wo-
men of more than threescore they are
external accretions, like the shell of a
mollusk, the jointed plates of an artic
ulate.-Olirer Wendell Holmes in JuIy
Atlantic.
Dante and Plato will be talked about