THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AGES.
"It is hard to find a whole age to imitate, or what century to propose for our example. Some have been far more approvable than others but virtue and vice, panegyrics and satires, scatteringly to be found in all history, sets down not only things laudable but abominable; things which should never have been, or never have been known. So that noble patterns must be fetched here and there from single persons rather than whole nations, and from whole nations rather than any one."
SIR THOMAS BROWN.-Christian Morals.
"Almost every one when a state of civilization is spoken of, understands by that phrase our own state, and that of the other most refined European nations. No doubt we are more civilized than our ancestors, and than the mass of mankind at the present day. But I hope and trust, that our posterity five centuries hence will look on us as semibarbarians."
ARCHBISHOP WHATELY.-Political Economy.
"The slow progress of the race in true morality, is to be ascribed to the consecrated crudities of former ages. The ideas of mankind, naturally progressive on this as on all other subjects, are continually called back to the venerated model, while they have an irresistible tendency to depart from it. To borrow an expressive phrase from a modern writer, they are "tethered to the stump of old superstitions." Thus the morality of a nation may long remain rude, vacillating, and inconsistent amidst the wonders of mechanical art, the achievements of physical science, and the refinements of taste."
SAMUEL BAILEY.-Author of Essays on the Publication of Opinion.