“Once more, who would not be a boy?”—or girl? and revel in the delights—real or imaginary—of things gone by? What a halo is round them! Their pleasures were exquisite, and their very miseries have in remembrance, a piquancy of flavour that is almost agreeable. I suppose the habit of most of us who have attained a certain, or rather uncertain age, is to revel in the past, to endure the present, and to let the future look after itself.

Now this is all well enough for the sentimentalist, or for the poet who, like Bulwer, can write at thirty “on the departure of youth.” But to the philosopher—that is, of course, to each member of “Pen and Pencil”—another and more useful tone of mind and method of comparison should not be absent. Is not the present what was the future to the past, and may we not by comparing the existing with what has been, as also with what was the aspiration of the past, throw some light, borrowed though it be, on what will be the present to our descendants? Mr. Pecksniff observes: “It is a poor heart that never rejoices.” Let us manifest our wealth—of imagination, shall I say?—by endeavouring to realize how, through the falsehood and wickedness of the past, we have arrived at our own lofty and noble eminence.

When we read, in the blood-stained pages of history, of nations and continents plunged into warfare of the most horrible and heartrending description, at the call of national glory or dynastic ambition, how can we sufficiently rejoice at the soft accents of peace and happiness which none would now venture to interrupt over the length and breadth of happy Europe?

The age of falsehood and party spirit may be said to have passed away. Our newspapers tell nothing but truth, and the only difference perceptible in their mild criticisms of friend or foe, is that they betray a generous tendency to do more than justice to their enemies.

If we cannot say that pauperism is extinct, yet we can honestly affirm that, if we cannot destroy the accursed thing itself, yet we can, and do so deal with paupers that the weakest, at least, soon cease to be a burden on the rates. Science and humanity have shaken hands, and the soft persuasions of chemical compounds are employed to assist down any unhappy girl who should be betrayed into aspirations towards the chimney-pot. We all know that gluttony is one of the greatest evils in the world, and which of our hearts could be hard enough not to glow with rapture at the benevolent rule of a London Union, mentioned in to-day’s paper, of never giving their inmates anything to tax their digestive forces between 5 P.M. and 8 A.M.

Again, when we read in our “Spectators” or other venerable records of the follies of fashion of 150 years ago, or indeed of any other epoch we like to recur to—of hoops and paint, and patches—how may we rejoice at the greater wisdom of our ladies in these days, in recognizing how beautifully they blend the tasteful with the useful! Their crinoline, how Grecian in its elegance; their chignons, how intellectual in appearance; their bonnets, how well calculated to protect from rain and sun; their trains, how cleanly; their boot-heels, how well calculated to produce by natural means what the barbarian Chinese seek by coarser methods—to deform the foot, and thus, by limiting their power of walking, to leave them more time for high intellectual culture.Of the improvement in our social morals it is needless to speak, and indeed I must decline to do so, if only that in drawing a comparison I should have to shock the ears of “Pen and Pencil” with some allusions to things gone by. I will but casually refer to two salient characteristics of the enormities of bygone times—to novels and to the theatre. Compare but for a moment the wild and almost licentious writings of a Walter Scott, an Edgeworth, or an Austen with the pure and unexaggerated novels of the present halcyon time. And for our theatres, if it be possible to imagine anything more chaste and elevating than the existing drama—anything more stimulating to all that is purest, more repressive of all that is vulgar and low in our ballets or pantomimes—why, I very much mistake the realities that lie before us.

Finally, in the religion of the country—there where one looks for the summing up and climax as it were of all the incidental advances we have glanced at, how glorious is the spectacle! The fopperies of ecclesiastical upholstery banished from the land; the hardness and cruelty of dogmatic intolerance heard no more; a noble life everywhere more honoured than an orthodox belief.

Surely we have reached the Promised Land—it overflows with charity, with peace, plenty, and concord; and the only regret left to us is the fear that in so good a world none of us can entertain the hope to leave it better than we found it!