matters of course, to improvements in their condition, which,
when anticipated, seemed to leave nothing more to be desired,
could not be more strikingly illustrated. What reflection could
be better calculated to moderate the enthusiasm of reformers
who count for their reward on the lively gratitude of future ages!

The object of this volume is to assist persons who, while
desiring to gain a more definite idea of the social contrasts
between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are daunted by
the formal aspect of the histories which treat the subject.
Warned by a teacher's experience that learning is accounted a
weariness to the flesh, the author has sought to alleviate the
instructive quality of the book by casting it in the form of a
romantic narrative, which he would be glad to fancy not wholly
devoid of interest on its own account.

The reader, to whom modern social institutions and their
underlying principles are matters of course, may at times find
Dr. Leete's explanations of them rather trite--but it must be
remembered that to Dr. Leete's guest they were not matters of
course, and that this book is written for the express purpose of
inducing the reader to forget for the nonce that they are so to
him. One word more. The almost universal theme of the writers
and orators who have celebrated this bimillennial epoch has
been the future rather than the past, not the advance that has
been made, but the progress that shall be made, ever onward and
upward, till the race shall achieve its ineffable destiny. This is
well, wholly well, but it seems to me that nowhere can we find
more solid ground for daring anticipations of human development
during the next one thousand years, than by "Looking