ANCIENT AND MODERN CIVILISATION.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1582, 25 March 1887, Page 3

ANCIENT AND MODERN CIVILISATION.

It was an age of material progress ami material civilisation, an age of civil liberty and intellectual culture ; an age of pamphlets and epigrams, of salons and of dinner-parties; of senatorial majorities and electoral corruption. The highest offices of state were open in theory to the meanest citizen; thoy were confined, in fact, to those who had the longest purses, or the most reaiy use of the tongue on popular platforms. Distinctions of birth hai beeu exchanged for distinctions of wealth. The struggles bstween plebeians arid patricians for equality of oriviloge were over, and a new division had been formed between the party of property and a party who desired a change in the structure of siciety. The free cultivators ware disappearing from the soil. Italy wis being absorbed into vast estates, held by a few favoured families aud cultivated by slaves, while the old agricultural population was driven oIF the laud, and was crowded into towns. The rich were extravagant, for life had cetfß'<d to have practical interest except for its material pleasures; the occupation of the higher classes was to obtain money without labour, and to spend it in idle enjoyment. Patriotismsurvived on the lips, but patriotism meant the ascendancy of the party which would maintain the existing order of things, or would overthrow it for a more equal distribution of the good things which alone were vvlued. Religion, onca the foundation of the laws and rule of personal conduct, had subsided into opinion. The educated, in their hearts, disbelieved it. Temples were still built with increasing splendour; the established forms were scrupulously observed. Public men spoke conventionally of Providence, that they might throw on their opponents the odium of impiety; but of genuine belief that life had any serious meaning there was none remaining beyond the circle of the silent, patient, ignorant multitude. The whole spiritual atmosphere was saturated with cant —cant moral, cant pol'tical, cant religious ; an affectation of high principle which had ceased to touch the conduct, and fl )wed on in an increasing jjvolume of insincere and unreal speech.—-Ca)3ar f byJ.A.Froude.