few generations fail to be interested in what interested their immediate predecessors immensely. It is not surprising, then, that history should show us at all times men doing work about like that which they did at any other time--provided they were deeply interested enough. The wisdom of the oldest book in the world, a father's advice to his son, is as practical in most ways as Gorgon Graham's letters to his boy--and ever so much {56} more ethical and true to life. The decorations of the old Egyptian tombs, the architecture of their temples, their ways and habits of life so far as we know them, all proclaim them men and women just like ourselves, certainly not separated from us by any gulf or even streamlet of evolution. What are more interesting than any supposed progress in mankind, are the curious ups and downs of interest in particular subjects which follow one another with almost definite regularity in history as we know it. Men become occupied with some phase of the expression of life, literature, architecture, government, sometimes in two or three of these at the same time, and then there comes a wonderful period of development. Just when this epoch reaches an acme of power of expression there come a self-consciousness and a refinement, welcomed at first as new progress, but that seem to hamper originality. Then follows a period of distinct decadence, but with a development of criticism of what was done in the past, with the formulation of certain principles of criticism. Just when by this conscious reflection it might be expected that man would surely advance rapidly, further decay takes place and there is a negative phase of power of expression, out of which man is lifted by a new generation usually neglectful of the immediate past, sometimes indeed deprecating it bitterly, though this new phase may have been awakened by a further past, which gets back to nature and to expression for itself. {57}