too apt to think that there is nothing for us
of to-day, but to bless our stars that we were born in the 19th
century; yet if we who carry "the torch of experience lighted at the
ashes of past delusions" have escaped from the mists and the shadows
along the way which our grandfathers toiled, the responsibility for
bettering their work is all the greater.

We may not be able to close this wonderful 19th century with any
practical realization of all the dreams of ideal citizenship which made
up the last expiring breath of the 18th century. But we have {194}
gone a long way in that direction, and happily it has been along a
roadway, toilsome and rough at times, upon which there is no need for
going back to retrace our steps. Standing now, on the higher ground to
which the exertions of our fathers, and the forces which their work set
in motion for our benefit, have brought us, we see down into the
valley, along the rugged way we have come, abundant reason why men
often misunderstood each other--they could not see each other in any
true and just light. But just as the heavy material roadway along
which the old locomotion was shifting a hundred years ago, from horses'
backs on to wheels, has become firmer, broader, lighter, and freer by
the cutting down of hedge rows and hindrances which shut out the
sweetening influence of light and air; so along the highways of men's
thoughts and actions there has been an analogous process of cutting
down boundaries and removing hindrances which divided men in the past,
until we see one another face to face.

It may be that some few distinctions will be preserved after all the
modern political programmes have been played out, but let us hope that
the hedges which divide men will be kept well trimmed and low. For,
after all, it is impossible to gather up these old voices of a past
time, or to look back over such a period as that which has been passed
in review by these sketches without recognizing that if men will only
stand upright, whatever their station, and not stoop to narrow the
horizon of their view, they must see how broad, and how fertile in all
human, homely and kindly attraction, are the common heritage, the
common work, the common rest and the common hopes of men, compared with
the narrow paths within high party walls--whether of religious creeds,
social grades, or false notions of what is respectable--within which
men have too often in the past sought to hide themselves fro