have been civilized; the powerful armies have been civilized; and the average of life, health, size, and strength is highest to-day among those races where knowledge and wealth and comfort are most widely spread.  And yet, by the common lamentation, one would suppose that all civilization is a slow suicide of the race, and that refinement and culture are to leave man at last in a condition like that of the little cherubs on old tomb-stones, all head and wings.

It must be owned that the delusion has all the superstitions of history in its favor, and only the facts against it.  If we may trust tradition, the race has undoubtedly been tapering down from century to century since the Creation, so that the original Adam must have been more than twice the size of the Webster statue.  However far back we go, admiring memory looks farther.  Homer and Virgil never let their hero throw a stone without reminding us that modern heroes only live in glass houses, to have stones thrown at them.  Lucretius and Juvenal chant the same lament.  Xenophon, mourning the march of luxury among the Persians, says that modern effeminacy has reached such a pitch, that men have even devised coverings for their fingers, called gloves.  Herodotus narrates, that, when Cambyses sent ambassadors to the Macrobians, they asked what the Persians had to eat and how long they commonly lived.  He was told that they sometimes attained the age of eighty, and that they ate a mass of crushed grain, which they termed bread.  On this, they said that it was no wonder, if the Persians died young, when they partook of such rubbish, and that probably they would not survive even so long, but for the wine they drank; while the Macrobians lived on flesh and milk, and survived one hundred and twenty years.

But, unfortunately, there were no Life Insurance Companies among the Macrobians, and therefore nothing to bring down this formidable average to a reliable schedule,—­such as accurately informs every modern man how long he may live honestly, without defrauding either his relict or his insurers.  We know, moreover, precisely what Dr. Windship can lift, at any given date, and what the rest of us cannot; but Homer and Virgil never weighed the stones which their heroes threw, nor even the words in which they described the process.  It is a matter of certainty that all great exploits are severely tested by Fairbanks’s scales and stop-watches.  It is wonderful how many persons, in the remoter districts, assure the newspaper-editors of their ability to lift twelve hundred pounds; and many a young oarsman can prove to you that he has pulled his mile faster than Ward or Clark, if you will only let him give his own guess at time and distance.