pointed out to it by unfailing signs of the times; and it is unmanly
and stupid for the children of any age to say: We will not set our
hands to the work; we did not make the troubles, we will not weary
ourselves seeking a remedy for them: so heaping up for their sons a
heavier load than they can lift without such struggles as will wound
and cripple them sorely. Not thus our fathers served us, who,
working late and early, left us at last that seething mass of people
so terribly alive and energetic, that we call modern Europe; not
thus those served us, who have made for us these present days, so
fruitful of change and wondering expectation.

The century that is now beginning to draw to an end, if people were
to take to nicknaming centuries, would be called the Century of
Commerce; and I do not think I undervalue the work that it has done:
it has broken down many a prejudice and taught many a lesson that
the world has been hitherto slow to learn: it has made it possible
for many a man to live free, who would in other times have been a
slave, body or soul, or both: if it has not quite spread peace and
justice through the world, as at the end of its first half we fondly
hoped it would, it has at least stirred up in many fresh cravings
for peace and justice: its work has been good and plenteous, but
much of it was roughly done, as needs was; recklessness has commonly
gone with its energy, blindness too often with its haste: so that
perhaps it may be work enough for the next century to repair the
blunders of that recklessness, to clear away the rubbish which that
hurried work has piled up; nay even we in the second half of its
last quarter may do something towards setting its house in order.

You, of this great and famous town, for instance, which has had so
much to do with the Century of Commerce, your gains are obvious to