122 A VERY OLD MASTER 



tLo Thames has hunted the mammoth among unbroken 

 forest two hundred thousand years af,'o and more ; with it 

 he has faced tlio angry cave bear and the origiiuil and only 

 genuine British hon (for everybody knows that the existing 

 mongrel heraldic beast is nothing better than a bastard 

 modification of the leopard of the Plantagenets). Nay, I 

 have very little doubt in my own mind that with it some 

 fcsthetic ancestor has brained and cut up for his use his 

 next-door neighbour in the nearest cavern, and then carved 

 upon his well-picked bones an interesting sketch of the entire 

 performance. The Du Mauriers of that remote age, in fact, 

 habitually drew their society pictures upon the personal 

 remains of the mammoth or the man whom they wished 

 to caricature in deathless bone-cuts. The other paper- 

 weight is a polished neolithic tomahawk, belonging to the 

 period of the mound-builders, who succeeded the Glacial 

 Epoch, and it measures the distance between the two levels 

 of civilisation with great accuracy. It is the military 

 weapon of a trained barbaric warrior as opposed to the 

 miiversal implement and utensil of a rude, solitary, savage 

 hunter. Yet how curious it is that even in the midst of 

 this ' so-called nineteenth century,' which perpetually pro- 

 claims itself an age of progress, men should still prefer to 

 believe themselves inferior to their original ancestors, 

 instead of being superior to them ! The idea that man 

 has risen is considered base, degrading, and positively 

 wicked ; the idea that he has fallen is considered to be 

 immensely inspiring, ennobling, and beautiful. For myself, 

 I have somehow always preferred the boast of the Homeric 

 Glaucus that w^e indeed maintain ourselves to be much 

 better men than ever were our fathers. 



