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AN AGE OF MEDIOCRITY.
i LL'LL IN. THE. PROCESSION OP
";; v . great men. . / :
.Sii\^Viliiani /B/ Richmoiid, !R.A., has:
declared that his is au.age* of .mediocrity.
''I 'am .forced, tpl'tlie . conclusion," -.lie
says in,' "GreatTlioughts,'.', "that people do
hqt'want the higher ,efforts of thought or
imagination .111 juy department of life."
It was hot always thus:—
V "Take; Homer,, for example. I ask,
Would Homer's poetry have lasted from
mile centuries, before. Christ, and have
p'xereised.such an'enormous influence on
the 'human mind jT it had 'not represent
ed the very best? Or would Dante, or
Shakspbare, or Milton, or sonic five or
six other pebple.'tbat one could mention,
have.;become immortal if.,they had not
striven,to reach the,high-water mark of
excellence?. The fact , of their immor
tality, proves, that, they, dealt with sub
jects .which .were hot .merely fashionable
or passing, but:which ivere, everlasting
ly true."
That- things used to go more slowly, we
know,;addcd Sir W. B., Richmond. "It
took some 200 years for the Norman
style of- architecture- to fade out, into the
Perpendicular. Rut now things change
in a week. .There:is no stability-now
adays.". ; . ■
; MATERIALISM AND PHILAN
THROPY
The present condition of things Sir
W". B. Richmond attributes to the fact
that'we have growl! so materialistic that
wb are' only able to describe some passing
phase of the "moment. Everything :we
produce is ephemeral: ,,:
'■'No doubt" wo-.'moderns are , philan
thropic. There never..was "an age in
which so much'was given away. But
a materialistic standpoint, ... . . This is
everything seems to be regarded, from
not a secular age; it is a weak age. If any
thing,'I should say the age is not- sen
sual enough. It is not an ago of strenu
ous fight, in which great crimes go along"
with great virtues, like the times, say,
of Era Augelico, when th° streets of
Florence-ran'blood.-'1 But it-..is an age of
mediocrity. The worst forms of crime
coihmittcd nowadays are produced by
the -love of ..wealth, by the endeavor to
become rich at all costs. It is a pushing
age. I'c-oplo thrust one another aside.
Everything is done for the immediate
advantage of the ego.". =.
"Only tlie concerns of the moment are
thought of, and therefore this is bound
td.be an age of ,mediocrity."
;, THE RETI'RN OF GREAT TIMES.
"Do you think wo are" never going to
have great ' times again?" Sir W. B.
Richmond was'asked :
- ^'Things niay get w_brse, and then I
think they will get better. I think, as
I said in in.v letter to the Press the other
day, that there is a natural lull in the
procession of_great'men.- Nature asks
tinie to'repair horself. After such a
vigorous epoch as we have had, after a
century which has produced such men as
Macaulay, Hallam, Mill, Gladstone. Dis
raeli, Wagner, Brahms, Keats, Shelley,
Tennyson, Browning, Turner, Watts,
Millais; Rossetti, Loighton, and Btirne
Jonos, we are suffering from exhaustion.
We are just lying fallow, and something
will some day arouse lis from' our state of
torpor.
What that will be Sir W. B. Richmond
could'not |say.' . "Anything .big that wil
touch the sense of the nation. Only some
magical .'■touch.,' something affecting
everybody, enn recall us from" an age of
materialism to an age of idealism."
Mi", dustico MacLeah, sitting in the
Supreme Court of New York, recently,
disposed of 23 divoreo cases in seven
hours.
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