The Good Old Times. By J. C. Wright. (Elliot Stock.
6s. net.)— Mr. Wright has collected with diligence, and brought together with no little skill and in effective contrast, a multitude of interesting facts. In such a wiaic it is inevitable .to have to weigh, so to speak,, one age against another. Our author holds the balance fairly enough. He has grasped the great principle that in social, political, and literary development there is a continual chain of causation. Every age is the child of that which went before, the parent of that which comes after. To say of one that it is bad, of another that it is good, is to be insensible to the orderliness of the whole process. Of course, this does not hinder a belief in a general upward movement. The measure of this is not always to be estimated in figures. This is for the most part impossible, but now and then it can be done. The duration of life is a case in point. Nothing could be better marked than the contrast between the first and last decades of the half-century 1851-1900. The mortality in 1851-1860 was 21/ per thousand; in 1891-1900 it was 17-9. And the change began with 1875, when the Public Health Act was passed.
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