Yet this is the very century at which Carlyle railed: and it is strange to think that he could speak of the men at that very moment engaged in doing such deeds, as belonging to a worn-out age. His vision was clear to see the importance and the true bearing of England’s civil war of the seventeenth century, and yet he remained mole-blind to the vaster and more important civil war waged before his very eyes in nineteenth-century America. The heroism of Naseby and Worcester and Minden hid from him the heroism of Balaklava and Inkerman, of Lucknow and Delhi. He could appreciate at their worth the campaigns of the Seven Year’s War, and yet could hardly understand those waged between the armies of the Potomac and of Northern Virginia. He was fairly inspired by the fury and agony and terror of the struggle at Kunnersdorf; and yet could not appreciate the immensely greater importance of the death-wrestle that reeled round Gettysburg. His eyes were so dazzled by the great dramas of the past that he could not see the even greater drama of the present. It is but the bare truth to say that never have the rewards been greater, never has there been more chance for doing work of great and lasting value, than this last half of the nineteenth century has offered alike to statesman and soldier, to explorer and commonwealth-builder, to the captain of industry, to the man of letters, and to the man of science. Never has life been more interesting to each to take part in. Never has there been a greater output of good work done both by the few and by the many. Nevertheless, signs do not fail that we are on the eve of great changes, and that in the next century we shall see the conditions of our lives, national and individual, modified after a sweeping and radical fashion. Many of the forces that make for national greatness and for individual happiness in the nineteenth century will be absent entirely, or will act with greatly diminished strength, in the twentieth. Many of the forces that now make for evil will by that time have gained greatly in volume and power. It is foolish to look at the future with blind and careless optimism; quite as foolish as to gaze at it only through the dun-colored mists that surround the preachers of pessimism. It is always best to look facts squarely in the face, without blinking them, and to remember that, as has been well said, in the long run even the most uncomfortable truth is a safer companion than the pleasantest falsehood. Whether the future holds good or evil for us does not, it is true, alter our duty in the present. We must stand up valiantly in the fight for righteousness and wisdom as we see them, and must let the event turn out as it may. Nevertheless, even though there is little use in pondering over the future, most men of intelligence do ponder over it at times, and if we think of it at all, it is well to think clearly.