Let there be no deception or disappointment. I want you to play with an idea as children play at ball--not football--but the old game of catch. And out of this discussion, for I trust that you will all differ, if not with me, at least with each other, trains of thought may be quickened; mental grassland ploughed up; hidden perspectives unveiled. Above all, I would stimulate you to an appreciation of your contemporaries and of contemporary literature, contemporary drama, and contemporary art. Every few years distinguished men lift their voices, and tell us that all is over, _decay has begun_. The obscure and the anonymous echo the sentiment in the London Press. With the fall of any Government its supporters prophesy the rapid decomposition of the Empire; in the pulpit eloquent preachers of every sect and communion, thundering against the vices of Society, declare that Society is breaking up. Of course, not being in Society, I am hardly in a position to judge; and the vices I know only at second-hand--from the preachers. Yet I see no outward signs of decay in Society; it dresses quite as well, in some ways better than, it did. Society eats as much, judging from the size and number of new restaurants; its patronises as usual the silliest plays in London, and buys in larger quantities than ever the idiotic novels provided for it. Have you ever been to a bazaar in aid of Our Dumb Friends' League? Well, you see Society _there_, I can tell you; it is not dumb. And the conversation sounds no less vapid and no less brilliant than we are told it was in the eighteenth century; the dresses and faces are quite as pretty. But much as I should like to discuss the decay of English Society and the English nation, I feel that such lofty themes are beyond my reach. I am concerned only with the so-called decay of humbler things, the abstract manifestations of the human intellect, the Arts and Sciences. And lest, weary at the end of my discourse, you forget the argument or miss it, let me state at once what I wish to suggest, nay, what I wish to assert, _there is no such thing as decay_. Decay is an intellectual Mrs. Harris, a highly useful entity wherewith the journalistic Gamps try to frighten Betsy Prig. Of course an obvious objection to my assertion is the truism that everything has a life; and that towards the end of that natural life we are correct in speaking of approaching decay. With physical phenomena, however, I am not dealing, though I may say, by the way, that there are many examples of human intellect maturing in middle life or extreme old age. William Blake's masterpiece, the illustrations to the Book of Job, were executed when he was sixty-eight, a few years before his death. The late Lord Kelvin is an example of an unimpaired intellect. Still, it must be admitted that while nations may be destroyed by conquest, or by conquering too much and becoming absorbed by the conquered, and that ancient buildings may be