THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. FROUDE'S "PROGRESS"

By Charles Dudley Warner

To revisit this earth, some ages after their departure from it, is a
common wish among men. We frequently hear men say that they would give so
many months or years of their lives in exchange for a less number on the
globe one or two or three centuries from now. Merely to see the world
from some remote sphere, like the distant spectator of a play which
passes in dumb show, would not suffice. They would like to be of the
world again, and enter into its feelings, passions, hopes; to feel the
sweep of its current, and so to comprehend what it has become.

I suppose that we all who are thoroughly interested in this world have
this desire. There are some select souls who sit apart in calm endurance,
waiting to be translated out of a world they are almost tired of
patronizing, to whom the whole thing seems, doubtless, like a cheap
performance. They sit on the fence of criticism, and cannot for the life
of them see what the vulgar crowd make such a toil and sweat about. The
prizes are the same dreary, old, fading bay wreaths. As for the soldiers
marching past, their uniforms are torn, their hats are shocking, their
shoes are dusty, they do not appear (to a man sitting on the fence) to
march with any kind of spirit, their flags are old and tattered, the
drums they beat are barbarous; and, besides, it is not probable that they
are going anywhere; they will merely come round again, the same people,
like the marching chorus in the "Beggar's Opera." Such critics, of
course, would not care to see the vulgar show over again; it is enough
for them to put on record their protest against it in the weekly
"Judgment Days" which they edit, and by-and-by withdraw out of their
private boxes, with pity for a world in the creation of which they were