EFFECT OF EXPERIENCE.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2903, 15 July 1882, Page 3

EFFECT OF EXPERIENCE.

The following extract is given by the “ Australasian ” in the course of an able review of “John Inglesant’’ a new English Romance. It contains much philosophy:— “When you have lived longer in this world and outlived the enthusiastic and pleasing illusions of youth, you will find your love and pity for the race increase tenfold, and your admiration and attachment to any particular party or opinion fall away altogether. You will not find the royal cause perfect any more than any other, nor those embarked in it free from mean and sordid motives, though you think now that all of them act from the noblest. This is tho most important lesson that a man can learn —that all men are really alike ; that all creeds and opinions are nothing but the mere result of chance and temperament; that no party is, on tho whole, better than another; that no creed does more than shadow forth some one side of truth ; and it is only when you begin to see this, that you can feel that pity for mankind, that sympathy with its disappointment and follies, and its natural human hopes, which have such a little time of growth, and such a sure season of decay. I have seen nothing more pathetio,than touches in the life of some of these Puritans—men who have, as they thought, in obedience to the will of the Deity, denied themselves pleasurehuman pleasure —through their lives, and now and then some old song, some pleasant natural tale of love hashes

across their path, and the true human instinct of the sons of Adam lights up within them Nothing but tho Infinite pity is sufficient for the infinite pathos of human life.”