been a notable increase of wealth.

Vice and suffering, indeed, are as grave as ever, and we are
afflicted by the trouble of heresies; but this does not prove a
general deterioration of morals. If that inveterate complaint, the
refrain chanted by old men in every age, were true, the world would
already have reached the extreme limit of wickedness, and integrity
would have disappeared utterly. Seneca long ago made the right
criticism. Hoc maiores nostri questi sunt, hoc nos querimur, hoc
posteri nostri querentur, eversos esse mores .... At ista stant loco
eodem. Perhaps Le Roy was thinking particularly of that curious book
the Apology for Herodotus, in which the eminent Greek scholar, Henri
Estienne, exposed with Calvinistic prejudice the iniquities of
modern times and the corruption of the Roman Church. [Footnote:
L'Introduction au traite de la conformite des merveilles anciennes
avec les modernes, ou traite preparatif a l'Apologie pour Herodote,
ed. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1879. The book was published in 1566.]

But if we are to judge by past experience, does it not follow that
this modern age must go the same way as the great ages of the past
which it rivals or even surpasses? Our civilisation, too, having
reached perfection, will inevitably decline and pass away: is not
this the clear lesson of history? Le Roy does not shirk the issue;
it is the point to which his whole exposition has led and he puts it
vividly.

"If the memory of the past is the instruction of the present and the
premonition of the future, it is to be feared that having reached so
great excellence, power, wisdom, studies, books, industries will
decline, as has happened in the past, and disappear--confusion