the word _Senior_ (Seigneur, or _Elder_) was first devised to signify
"lord," or superior;--as in all languages of men we find it to have
been! Not an honorable document this either, as to the spiritual
condition of our epoch. In times when men love wisdom, the old man will
ever be venerable, and be venerated, and reckoned noble: in times that
love something else than wisdom, and indeed have little or no wisdom,
and see little or none to love, the old man will cease to be venerated;
and looking more closely, also, you will find that in fact he has ceased
to be venerable, and has begun to be contemptible; a foolish boy still,
a boy without the graces, generosities and opulent strength of young
boys. In these days, what of _lordship_ or leadership is still to be
done, the youth must do it, not the mature or aged man; the mature man,
hardened into sceptical egoism, knows no monition but that of his own
frigid cautious, avarices, mean timidities; and can lead no-whither
towards an object that even seems noble. But to return.

This mad state of matters will of course before long allay itself, as
it has everywhere begun to do; the ordinary necessities of men's daily
existence cannot comport with it, and these, whatever else is
cast aside, will have their way. Some remounting--very temporary
remounting--of the old machine, under new colors and altered forms, will
probably ensue soon in most countries: the old histrionic Kings will
be admitted back under conditions, under "Constitutions," with national
Parliaments, or the like fashionable adjuncts; and everywhere the old
daily life will try to begin again. But there is now no hope that
such arrangements can be permanent; that they can be other than poor
temporary makeshifts, which, if they try to fancy and make themselves
permanent, will be displaced by new explosions recurring more speedily
than last time. In such baleful oscillation, afloat as amid raging
bottomless eddies and conflicting sea-currents, not steadfast as
on fixed foundations, must European Society continue swaying, now
disastrously tumbling, then painfully readjusting itself, at ever
shorter intervals,--till once the _new_ rock-basis does come to light,
and the weltering deluges of mutiny, and of need to mutiny, abate again!

For universal _Democracy_, whatever we may think of it, has declared
itself as an inevitable fact of the days in which we live; and he
who has any chance to instruct, or lead, in his days