NATIONAL AND DOMESTIC EDUCATION. 



BY AN OLD WOMAN. 



THE present is the age of free inquiry ; it were well to make it 

 one of improved action, and that the wisdom we are extracting from 

 the experience of the past, be, as speedily as possible, applied to the 

 necessities of the present. 



In reviewing the history of man, we find him in every age, in 

 every latitude, maintaining much the same character. This unifor- 

 mity of effect has been produced by uniformity of cause. If we 

 would abrogate the one, we must annul the other ; for while the 

 cause is in operation the effect will follow, notwithstanding every 

 countervailing check, or ingenious remedy with which the evil be 

 subsequently met. 



It is impossible not to smile at the pertinacity with which moralists, 

 in all ages, have censured their cotemporaries, and applauded their 

 predecessors ; attributing a fabulous virtue to these, and an exagge- 

 rated wickedness to those ; though, as their principle was the same, 

 their practise could not be very dissimilar. The fact is, the moralist 

 exerts his observation on the present, and employs his fancy on the 

 past, without reflecting that all have been, more or less, transmitters of 

 opinions, framed for their day perhaps expedient at the time, but no 

 more suited to a succeeding age, than the clothes of the child to the 

 frame of the adult. 



" How different," says Sallust, " are the manners of the present 

 age, in which there is not a man to be found who vies with his an- 

 cestors in probity and virtue, but only in riches and extravagance." 



Thus, from time to time, have writers gone on, finding out that 

 the existing race, as George Colman modestly says of himself, have 

 " Much degenerated from their fathers." 



Still, did not actual observation contradict these Jeremiahs, we might 

 sit down in absolute despair. The truth is, we are too like our 

 fathers, and so we shall continue as long as the causes that made them 

 what they were, are in operation upon us. 



Character, national and individual, has varied in degree, but little in 

 kind. Men have always been, more or less, selfish and rapacious. 

 The desire of happiness, almost co-equal with the desire of life, has 

 been left undirected or been misdirected ; it has therefore centered, 

 as it began, in self, and nations, instead of advancing, have prescribed 

 circles, till the opinion has obtained, that there is an ultimate point, as 

 in a clock, beyond which further advancement is impossible. But 

 the deduction is as false as the analogy is untrue. Humanity, 

 unlike any mechanism of its hands, never pauses; individuals 

 fall off, but the stream of life flows on flows on enriching the collec- 

 tive stores of knowledge by successive tributes ; because it is the pri- 

 vilege of man to transfer and transmit the fruit of his experience ; 

 and it is the nature of all that is really excellent to be imperishable. 

 Therefore, the older the world grows the richer it becomes, and we 



M. M. No. 93. 2 M 



