But I must go farther still, and after premising that the English classics, so called, of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries will of course form the bulk of the lectures, I must plead for some instruction in the works of recent and living authors. I cannot see why we are to teach the young about the past and not about the present. After all, they have to live now, and at no other time; in this same nineteenth century lies their work: it may be unfortunate, but we cannot help it. I do not see why we should wish to help it. I know no century which the world has yet seen so well worth living in. Let us thank God that we are here now, and joyfully try to understand _where_ we are, and what our work is _here_. As for all superstitions about "the good old times," and fancies that _they_ belonged to God, while this age belongs only to man, blind chance, and the Evil One, let us cast them from us as the suggestions of an evil lying spirit, as the natural parents of laziness, pedantry, popery, and unbelief. And therefore let us not fear to tell our children the meaning of this present day, and of all its different voices. Let us not be content to say to them, as we have been doing: "We will see you well instructed in the past, but you must make out the present for yourselves." Why, if the past is worth explaining, far more is the present--the pressing, noisy, complex present, where our work-field lies, the most intricate of all states of society, and of all schools of literature yet known, and therefore the very one requiring most explanation.