e stimulus
of immensely improved conditions of life around them, should be drawn
away from the old moorings?

{193}

Perhaps in no respect have the changes of time been greater than in the
political world, and yet there is a little of the _per contra_ even
here. Not only are political opinions freely uttered now for which a
man would have found himself in Newgate a hundred years ago, but Bills
of all kinds are introduced into Parliament with perfect safety to the
person of the member proposing them, such as our forefathers would
never have dreamed of advocating, even though they were sometimes
called bad names for their advanced political views. In the old days
the rural voter got a jollification, a drinking bout, and some hard
cash for his vote; now he can almost obtain an Act of Parliament.
Still, it is better than bribery, I suppose.

In writing this I do not in any sense hold a brief for the past as
against the present, but in contrasting these different phases of life
one is bound to acknowledge that we have lost a few things which would
have been well worth preserving. We have gained untold social
advantages, but we have in too many cases lost the priceless treasure
of individual contentment; we have gained a great many things that have
been labelled with the sacred name of freedom, but only too often to
bow down to false notions of respectability; we have been emancipated
as communities from the brutal display of sport and pastimes which have
been referred to in the earlier part of these pages, but in too many
cases only to substitute a more subtle form of gambling about names of
things printed in the newspapers, without any such excuse for the
interest taken as our forefathers had in the excitement which was
actually before their eyes; we have gained untold advantage in the
spread of knowledge, and the means of access to a wealth of
intellectual treasures such as our forefathers never dreamed of, but
have too often allowed our reading tastes to degenerate into nothing
more solid than the newspaper and a few literary _bon-bons_.

There has been both a levelling up and a levelling down in the matter
of education, for it is doubtful whether tradesmen and others called
middle-class people are so well educated--I mean so thoroughly
educated, for they know more things but fewer things well--as men were
a generation ago, if we consider education on the abstract and
intellectual side.

We are perhaps a little