positions, and for the vulgarity of the present age? Vulgarity in
public worship; vulgarity in the manners, the speeches, and the ideals
of the House of Commons; vulgarity in "literature," on the stage, in
music, in the studio, and in a section of the Press; vulgarity in
building and the desecration of beautiful places; vulgarity in form
and colour of dress and decoration. We are far behind the design and
construction of the domestic furniture of 150 years ago, and we have
never equalled the architecture of the earliest periods, for stability
and stateliness.

The skim milk seems to have come to the top and the cream has gone to
the bottom, as the result of the contravention of the laws of
evolution, and the failure to perceive the analogy between the
simplest methods of agriculture, and the cultivation of mentality. We
have expected fruit and flowers from waste and untilled soil; we sowed
the seed of instruction without even ploughing the land, or
eradicating the prominent weeds, and we are reaping a crop of thistles
where we looked for figs, and thorns where we looked for grapes. The
seed scattered so lavishly by the wayside was devoured by the fowls of
the air; that which was sown upon the stony places, where there was
not much earth, could not withstand the heat of summer; and that which
fell among thorns was choked by the unconquered possessors of the
field. A little, a very little, which "fell into good ground brought
forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold";
and therein lies our only consolation.

The educational enthusiasts of 1870 forgot that the material they had
to work upon did not come from inherited refinement and intelligence;
that it was evolved from a parentage content with a vocabulary of some
500 words; that there was little nobility of home influence to assist