prostrate and powerless, bound by the principles and traditions of five hundred years ago. Notwithstanding the abstinence of her people from the indulgence of the bowl, neither her future nor her present would offer any temptations to the people of New England.

Do not let us deceive ourselves into reversing the order of our own history. If drunkenness is the essential parent cause, and not usually the mere concomitant or consequence, of social degradation, there ought to be a time found somewhere far back in the former ages, when our own ancestors were sober, virtuous and happy; but when, visited by the seductive fruit of the vine, and falling into the snare of unwonted and alluring temptation, the shadow of a great woe came over them, never to pass away until the wine shall cease to redden in the cup. But the truth is otherwise. There has never been any such day of innocence and happiness, since Adam was banished from Eden. And yet, it is not difficult to trace back the steps of the progress of that country from which most Americans sprung, to times long before the introduction of spirits, or wines, or beer, or even ale itself into England.

The Britons, prior to the Roman conquest, knew so little of agriculture, were so rude and barbarous, that the strongest liquor they had, was mead, or honey mixed with water and allowed to ferment,— a product of the rudest and simplest kind, and of which the quantity possible must have been of necessity very little. But nevertheless, those were days of the spiritual domination of the Druids, of the darkest superstition, and of the brutal sacrifice of innocent human victims.

Under the Anglo-Saxons, parents are known to have exposed their children in the market place for sale like cattle. The poverty of the poor and the helplessness of their lot were such that on occasions of famine, to which in former times, England, rich, fertile and merry, but ignorant and unthrifty, was no stranger, many of them who were free, having no means of living, sold themselves into slavery. During all the feudal ages, private wars raged constantly. The feudal lords lived in a state of war against each other, and of rapine towards all mankind. A great portion of the people were helpless bondmen. All Europe was a scene of internal anarchy during the middle ages, and though England was less exposed to the scourge of private war than most nations on the conti

nent, she endured tumultuous rapine and frightful social disorder. The whole population of England, covering a territory seven or eight times as large as Massachusetts, was not, five hundred years ago, a million greater in number than the present inhabitants of our own Commonwealth. When Latin ceased to be a living language, the newly formed, or modern tongues, not being used in public documents or correspondence, the very use of books or letters was almost wholly unknown to the people. Schools, confined to cathedrals and monasteries, and exclusively designed for ecclesiastical purposes, afforded no encouragement or opportunity to the laity. It was rare for one of them, of whatever rank, to be able to write his name. Even the minor clergy were sometimes unable to translate into their own language the words they chanted in the celebration of the mass. The barons tyrannized over both serfs and tenants, and from the oppression of their absolute will the humble and despised could expect little redress and no permanent relief. The rudeness of agriculture, the absence of enterprising, intelligent commerce, the utter poverty of science, the discouragement of all the arts by the nobles who scorned everything but arms, kept down the poor, and rendered the

masses both hopeless and contemptible. War, slavery and ignorance could not fail to exhibit as their natural concomitant, the coarse, sensual indulgence of appetite, both excessive and depraved. Revelry and wassail distinguished the festivities and rejoicings of victory and the celebration of public events, invaded the solemnities of the church, and divided with indolence and the chase the empire of private life, whenever arms were silent. And what better fate or fortune could have been expected for the common poor, the serf, the follower, the retainer, than the humble and remote imitation of his lord?

The people were saved from the sense of insupportable misery, of conscious degradation, and of infinite hopelessness, by the brutishness of manners and their capacity for low enjoyments. Humanity, like Psyche in Grecian fable, enduring servitude and trial, wandering about in search of her lost but immortal love, is invisibly comforted and sustained. She wears always the wings which will one day unfold themselves for flight, when, purified both by passion and misfortune, she is ready for happiness in re-union with the lover whose immortality she has come to share. Wandering, like the maiden from temple to temple,

scorned, buffeted and oppressed, humanity retreats behind mortality, which shelters while it beclouds the soul. A tender and divine spirit is forever watching over her, softening calamity, whispering hope, providing deliverance, and assisting her conquest. By a universal law of nature, matter gravitates. But by a universal spiritual law, the soul aspires. There is a limit to moral disease. There is always a balm, and a physician in Gilead. The cure is often slow; but the patient lives forever.

Descending to a later era, I need only to borrow Macaulay's vivid picture of the character of England during the century between the Tudors and the Guelphs:

"There is scarcely a page of the history or lighter literature of the seventeenth century which does not contain some proof that our ancestors were less humane than their posterity. The discipline of workshops, of schools, of private families, though not more efficient than at present, were infinitely harsher. Masters, well born and bred, were in the habit of beating their servants. Pedagogues knew no way of imparting knowledge but by beating their pupils. Husbands, of decent station, were not ashamed to beat their wives. The implacability of hostile factions was such as we can scarcely conceive. Whigs were disposed to murmur because Stafford was suffered to die without seeing his bowels burned before his face. Tories reviled and insulted Russell as his coach passed from the Tower to the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn