‘What have we reaped from all the wisdom sown of ages?’ asks Lord Lytton in one of his earlier poems. A large query, even for so questioning an age as this, an age which, discarding catechisms, and rejecting the omniscient Mangnall’s Questions as a classic for its children, yet seems to be more interrogative than of old, even if a thought less ready in its responses. Possibly, we are all in too great a hurry nowadays, too eager in search to be patient to find, for certain it is that the world’s already large stock of hows and whys seems to get bigger every day. We catch the echoes in poetry and in prose, in all sorts of tones and from all sorts of people, and Lord Lytton’s question sounds only like another of the hopeless Pilate series. His is such a large interrogation too--all the wisdom sown of all the ages suggests such an enormous crop! And then as to what ‘we,’ who have neither planted nor watered, have ‘reaped’ from it! An answer, if it were attempted, might certainly be found to hinge on the ‘we’ as well as on the ‘wisdom,’ for whereas untaught instinct may ‘reap’ honey from a rose, trained reason in gathering the flower may only succeed in running a thorn into the finger. What has been the general effect of inherited wisdom on the general world may, however, very well be left for a possible solution to prize competitors to puzzle over. But to a tiny corner of the tremendous subject it is just possible that we may find some sort of suggestive reply; and from seed sown ages since, and garnered as harvest by men whose place knows them no more, we may likely light on some shadowy aftermath worth, perhaps, our reaping.