's advertisement or a
Lancashire factory town, quite ignoring the iniquity of mediaeval law
or the slums and hunger and cruelty of Imperial Rome.

But quite apart from such unsound comparisons, it is, we may admit,
possible to make a very excellent case against our general assertion
of progress. One can instance a great number of things, big and
little, that have been better in past times than they are now; for
example, they dressed more sumptuously and delightfully in mediaeval
Venice and Florence than we do--all, that is, who could afford it;
they made quite unapproachably beautiful marble figures in Athens in
the time of Pericles; there is no comparison between the brickwork of
Verona in the twelfth century and that of London when Cannon Street
Station was erected; the art of cookery declined after the splendid
period of Roman history for more than a thousand years; the Gothic
architecture of France and England exceeds in nobility and quality and
aggregated beauty, every subsequent type of structure. This much, one
agrees, is true, and beyond disputing. The philosophical thought of
Athens again, to come to greater things, was at its climax, more free,
more finely expressed than that of any epoch since. And the English of
Elizabeth's time was, we are told by competent judges, a more gracious
and powerful instrument of speech than in the days of Queen Anne or of
Queen Victoria.

So one might go on in regard to a vast number of things, petty and
large alike; the list would seem overwhelming until the countervailing
considerations came into play. But, as a matter of fact, there is
hardly an age or a race that does not show us something better done
than ever it was before or since, because at no time has human effort
ceased and absolutely failed. Isolated eminence is no proof of general
elevation. Always in this field or that, whether it was in the binding
of books or the enamelling of metal, the refinement of language or the
assertion of liberty, particular men have, by a sort of necessity,
grasped at occasion, "found themselves," as the saying goes, and done
the best that was in them. So always while man endures, whatever else
betide, one may feel assured at this or that special thing some men
will find a way to do and get to the crown of endeavour. Such
considerations of decline in particular things from the standard of
the past do not really affect the general assertion of a continuous
accumulating betterment in the