THE "ERA OF YOUTH."

Evening Star, Issue 11434, 29 December 1900, Page 2

THE "ERA OF YOUTH."

If the nineteenth century has been the "Woman's Era " (says a writer in the ' Fortnightly Review'), there are distinct signs that in the new one some very interesting and surprising developments are in store for us. The "Woman's Era" is being succeeded by the "Era. of Youth," for the important characteristic of the new century is the increasingly prominent part that the young generation are going to play in our social and intellectual life. One of the most distinctive signs of to-day is the repudiation of age. No one is old, and no one can afford to get older. The life, the occupations, the interests, the amusements, the ambitions of to-day are those of a youthful epoch, of a time when to be old is sin. We see it on every sjde, especially among women. Every mother is as young as lier children in dress and appearance, and grandmothers younger than either. ,11)0 reverence for ago, the tender respect with which it used to be regarded, is only a tradition, and the strong influence of youth is what inspires our life and dominates us in this new century. It is not wonderful that it should be so, for life is So pleasant to-day. Its duties, its occupations, are easy, and do not. need any great effort for their accomplishment. Life formerly was serious and real, there was, no artistic, no ideal side to it, and as women afed young people influence the life and society of their day, so in proportion as their lives wore narrow and uninteresting was existence dull and bornee. CHANGED MANNERS. There was a dulness and stiffness in every relation in life between husband and wife, parents' and children. The wife was hardly a companion to her husband, but much more his housekeeper; parents were stem, unsympathetic, and exacting as regarded their children ; and the only class with whom any feelings of equality or sentiment existed seemed to be between master and servant. When we contrast the simplicity of English life of only fifty years ago, the position of wonien, and the relations between parents and their children, with the luxury and equality of to-day, we realise how extraordinary and far-reaching is the change. Many causes have combined to bring it about; the softening influence of a woman as queen, the increasing facilities of cOhi'munication, the improvement in education, the great increase in wealth, and last, but not least, the effect of American life and thought on the Mother Country, are sufficient to account for a change which is only logically the result of the marvellous developments of the nineteenth century. AFTER FIFTY YEARS. If some Rip Van Winkle, fallen to sleep in 1860, could h6tf awake from his slutabef and enter our modern everyday life, he would certainly not believe it was the same England he said good-bye to fifty years ago. He would, indeed, look in,vain for inany of the landmarks and characteristics of his time. For the tranquillity and sleepiness of life, ho wtiuld awake to the hurry and. bustle of an age in. which life is not long enough to accomplish all that has grown out of our modern requirements, with its increasing interests and occupations which vary every year in character and number. He would look hi vain for the old-tvofld ndoks Of England, with their traditions and fancies, their quiet, tranquil existence, and see giant express trains rushing through the hamlet where he spent his youth ; smoking mills belching out black fumes by the stream that used to ripple softly in the noon-day heat, the smart newly-built town hall in the street of the old-fashioned village he know so well; the flaring electric light, where he had often stood under the gleam of the oil lamp in the softry darkening ayehiftg, watehing tho shadows descending on a sleeping wofld. He would find a bustling, active, strong-minded matron where he left the gentle, teuder-eyed grandmother; a loud-voiced managing wife, full of interest in, every kind of terrible question unknown and unheard of before ; and a tall, slight, gaily-dressed young lady, selfassertive, capable, and independent, in the place of the gentle«miling maiden he remembered in the days he went a-courting. This and so many more transformations would he find so incomprehensible that he would fain return once again, to the sleep he had broken and say god-bye to a world so strange and bewildering. s