and direct precepts,
even when they are exalted and endeared by reverence and love for the
teacher.

Nevertheless, though I trust that the assistance which my correspondent
has done me the honour to request, will in course of time flow naturally
from my labours, in a manner that will best serve him, I cannot resist
the inclination to connect, at present, with his letter a few remarks of
direct application to the subject of it; remarks, I say,--for to such I
shall confine myself,--independent of the main point out of which his
complaint and request both proceed; I mean the assumed inferiority of
the present age in moral dignity and intellectual power to those which
have preceded it. For if the fact were true, that we had even surpassed
our ancestors in the best of what is good, the main part of the dangers
and impediments which my correspondent has feelingly portrayed, could
not cease to exist for minds like his, nor indeed would they be much
diminished; as they arise out of the constitution of things, from the
nature of youth, from the laws that govern the growth of the faculties,
and from the necessary condition of the great body of mankind. Let us
throw ourselves back to the age of Elizabeth, and call up to mind the
heroes, the warriors, the statesmen, the poets, the divines, and the
moral philosophers, with which the reign of the virgin queen was
illustrated. Or if we be more strongly attracted by the moral purity and
greatness, and that sanctity of civil and religious duty, with which the
tyranny of Charles I. was struggled against, let us cast our eyes, in
the hurry of admiration, round that circle of glorious patriots: but do
not let us be persuaded, that each of these, in his course of
discipline, was uniformly helped forward by those with whom he
associated, or by those whose care it was to direct him. Then, as now,
existed objects to which the wisest attached undue importance; then, as
now, judgment was misled by factions and parties, time wasted in
controversies fruitless, except as far as they quickened the faculties;
then, as now, minds were venerated or idolized, which owed their
influence to the weakness of their contemporaries rather than to their
own power. Then, though great actions were wrought, and great works in
literature and science produced, yet the general taste was capricious,
fantastical, or grovelling; and in this point, as in all others, was
youth subject to delusion, frequent in proportion