phase of humanity, bringing with it new vices and new dangers:
but bringing, also, not merely new comforts, but new noblenesses,
new generosities, new conceptions of duty, and of how that duty
should be done. It is childish to regret the old times, when our
soot-grimed manufacturing districts were green with lonely farms.
To murmur at the transformation would be, I believe, to murmur at
the will of Him without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground.


The old order changeth, yielding place to the new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.


Our duty is, instead of longing for the good old custom, to take
care of the good new custom, lest it should corrupt the world in
like wise. And it may do so thus:

The rapid increase of population during the first half of this
century began at a moment when the British stock was specially
exhausted; namely, about the end of the long French war. There
may have been periods of exhaustion, at least in England, before
that. There may have been one here, as there seems to have been
on the Continent, after the Crusades; and another after the Wars
of the Roses. There was certainly a period of severe exhaustion
at the end of Elizabeth's reign, due both to the long Spanish and
Irish wars and to the terrible endemics introduced from abroad; an
exhaustion which may have caused, in part, the national weakness
which hung upon us during the reign of the Stuarts. But after
none of these did the survival of the less fit suddenly become