STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685 .

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should be constantly looking backward with tender regret.But these two propensities, inconsistent as they may appear, -can easily be resolved into the same principle. Both springfrom our impatience of the state in which we actually are.That impatience, while it stimulates us to surpass precedinggenerations, disposes us to overrate their happiness. It is,in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful in us to be con-stantly discontented with a condition which is constantly im-proving. But, in truth, there is constant improvement pre-cisely because there is constant discontent. If we were per-fectly satisfied with the present, we should cease to contrive,to labour, and to save with a view to the future. And it isnatural that, being dissatisfied with the present, we shouldform a too favourable estimate of the past.

In truth we are under a deception similar to that whichmisleads the traveller in the Arabian desert. Beneath thecaravan all is dry and bare: but far in advance, and far in therear, is the semblance of refreshing waters. The pilgrimshasten forward and find nothing but sand where, an hour be-fore, they had seen a lake. They turn their eyes and see alake where, an hour before, they were toiling through sand.A similar illusion seems to haunt nations through every stageof the long progress from poverty and barbarism to thehighest degrees of opulence and civilisation. But, if we re-solutely chase the mirage backward, we shall find it recedebefore us into the regions of fabulous antiquity. It is now thefashion to place the golden age of England in times whennoblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which wouldbe intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shop-keepers breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which wouldraise a riot in a modern workhouse, when men died faster inthe purest country air than they now die in the most pestilen-tial lanes of our towns, and when men died faster in the lanesof our towns than they now die on the coast of Guiana. We

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CHAP.

III.