episode, as if the universe began and ended with each generation--as in
reality it would appear to do for the great multitude of the actors.
There seems but a change of masks, of costume, of phraseology, combined
with a noisy but eternal monotony. Yet while men are produced and are
whirled away again in endless succession, Man remains, and to all
appearance is perpetual and immortal even on this earth. Whatever
science acquires man inherits. Whatever steadfastness is gained for
great moral truths which change not through the ages--however they may be
thought, in dark or falsely brilliant epochs, to resolve themselves into
elemental vapour--gives man a securer foothold in his onward and upward
progress. The great, continuous history of that progress is not made up
of the reigns of kings or the lives of politicians, with whose names
history has often found it convenient to mark its epochs. These are but
milestones on the turnpike. Human progress is over a vast field, and it
is only at considerable intervals that a retrospective view enables us to
discern whether the movement has been slow or rapid, onward or
retrograde.

The record of our race is essentially unwritten. What we call history is
but made up of a few scattered fragments, while it is scarcely given to
human intelligence to comprehend the great whole. Yet it is strange to
reflect upon the leisurely manner in which great affairs were conducted
in the period with which we are now occupied, as compared with the fever
and whirl of our own times, in which the stupendous powers of steam and
electricity are ever-ready to serve the most sublime or the most vulgar
purposes of mankind. Whether there were ever a critical moment in which
a rapid change might have been effected in royal or national councils,
had telegraphic wires and express trains been at the command of Henry,
or Burghley, or Barneveld, or the Cardinal Albert, need not and cannot
be decided. It is almost diverting, however, to see how closely the