But, to the point--progress made in estimating life. A few centuries ago, a torrent of enthusiasm set in the direction of bearing the cross into Asia, to fight for glory, and the propagation of Christianity, on the fields of Palestine. Already the old Roman military character was greatly improved on. Virtue, (_manliness_, a` vir-_man_) was no longer supposed to fulfil its highest office in Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. A delicate sense of honor, of the courtesy due to a foe and the gallantry to the other sex, betoken a type of humanity in advance of the brute ferocity of the best days of Rome. But, notwithstanding Mr. Burke's eloquence, and the opinion sometimes expressed, that the courtly knight of the middle age, realized the perfection of humanity; we have no reason to regret that the age of chivalry is gone by, and that the age of speculation, and money-making, and industrial enterprize has succeeded. The materialism of this age, with all its faults, is better than the chivalry of an age gone by. It tends to keep the world at peace; _that_ tended to perpetual turmoil. The supposition _all rich_, according to modern ideas, is not so flat a contradiction as the supposition _all glorious_, in military heroism. As the past age estimated life's supreme good, the enjoyment of a few _required_ the exclusion of the many from its benefits: as this age estimates the enjoyment of some, _admits_ the exclusion of others. Whether the mercantile spirit thoroughly entered into makes a better man than did the spirit of chivalry, may be doubted; not so, which best comports with the welfare of society. Now if one, at the time of the crusades, had so anticipated the spirit of the age, as to picture to himself modern Europe and America, manufacturing, trading, flocking to California, as if there a holy sepulcher was to be rescued from hands profane, glorying chiefly in mechanical development and mercantile enterprize; and had ventured to suggest, that instead of trooping to Asia to fight for glory, and the fancy of promoting religion by arguments of steel, it would be worthier of the choice spirits of the age to stay at home, and by industry and enterprize aim at multiplying the means of content to quiet life: he might have found a harder task than now devolves on him, who urges, that the materialism of this age must pass away, as has passed the chivalry of the crusades; both for the same reason; the progress of thought must outgrow the one, as it has outgrown the other.