Introduction
“Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty.”
As You Like It.
When Sydney Smith, towards the close of his life, considered the changes which had passed over the country within his recollection, he said that he wondered how the young men of his time had managed to preserve even a decent appearance of cheerfulness. Sydney Smith died in 1845, just at the beginning of those deeper and wider changes of which he suspected nothing; for, though he was a clear-headed man in many ways, he was no prophet—he saw the actual and the present, but was unable to feel the action of the invisible and potent forces which were creating a future to him terrible and almost impossible. Had he possessed the prophetic spirit, he would have been another Jeremiah for the destruction of the old forms of society; the levelling up and the levelling down destined to take place would have been pain and grief intolerable to him.
I have always maintained that the eighteenth century lingered on in its ways, customs, and modes of thought until the commencement of Queen Victoria’s reign, and I regard myself with a certain complacency as having been born on the fringe of that interesting period. I might also take pleasure in remembering that one who has lived through this reign has been an eyewitness, a bystander, perhaps in some minute degree an assistant, during a Revolution which has transformed this country completely from every point of view, not only in manners and customs, but also in thought, in ideas, in standards; in the way of regarding this world, and in the way of considering the world to come. I do not, however, take much pleasure in this retrospect, because the transition has taken place silently, without my knowledge; it escaped my notice while it went on: the world has changed before my eyes, and I have not regarded the phenomenon, being busily occupied over my own little individual interests. I have been, indeed, like one who sits in a garden thinking and weaving stories, nor heeding while the shadows shift slowly across the lawns, while the hand of the dial moves on from morning to afternoon. I have been like such a one, and, like him, I have awakened to find that the air, the light, the sky, the sunshine have all changed, and that the day is well-nigh done.