THE Central Literary Magazine. It must be borne in mind that this Magazine is neutral in Politics and Religion; its pages are open to a free expression of all shades of opinion without leaning to any. No. 4. OCTOBER, 1881. GERALD THE WELSHMAN. VOL. V. THE student of history or of literature finds, perhaps, no bad habit so hard to be rid of, or so prone to lead him astray, as the habit of forming an ideal picture of each by-gone age, and of each distinctive class of men; with the natural result that all discordant facts manage to get somehow clipped, coloured, or bent, until they agree with it. It seems the most difficult thing in the world for us fully to appreciate the fact that whatever change may have come over the outer circumstances of the world, man remains the same now that he always was, and always was just such as he now is. His surroundings have, of course, changed enormously, and science is at present changing them so rapidly that we can scarcely even conjecture what may be seen by our grandchildren. But we may very safely assert that the work of science will always be material work, and that although as a whole the path of humanity is doubtless a path of progress, yet judging him relatively to his circumstances, neither time nor clime will ever have made any real difference in man as an individual. Little details which we sometimes come across in our study of the past, occasionally startle us by the very familiarity of their commonplace into remembering that, as a whole, human nature does not change; and it is not without a shock that we learn how very much our ancestors were like ourselves. |