Herbert.  We are no nearer religious unity.

The parson.  We have as much war as ever.

Mandeville.  There was never such a social turmoil.

The young lady.  The artistic part of our nature does not appear to have grown.

The fire-tender.  We are quarreling as to whether we are in fact radically different from the brutes.

Herbert.  Scarcely two people think alike about the proper kind of human government.

The parson.  Our poetry is made out of words, for the most part, and not drawn from the living sources.

Our next door.  And Mr. Cumming is uncorking his seventh phial.  I never felt before what barbarians we are.

The mistress.  Yet you won’t deny that the life of the average man is safer and every way more comfortable than it was even a century ago.

The fire-tender.  But what I want to know is, whether what we call our civilization has done any thing more for mankind at large than to increase the ease and pleasure of living?  Science has multiplied wealth, and facilitated intercourse, and the result is refinement of manners and a diffusion of education and information.  Are men and women essentially changed, however?  I suppose the Parson would say we have lost faith, for one thing.

Mandeville.  And superstition; and gained toleration.

Herbert.  The question is, whether toleration is anything but indifference.

The parson.  Everything is tolerated now but Christian orthodoxy.

The fire-tender.  It’s easy enough to make a brilliant catalogue of external achievements, but I take it that real progress ought to be in man himself.  It is not a question of what a man enjoys, but what he can produce.  The best sculpture was executed two thousand years ago.  The best paintings are several centuries old.  We study the finest architecture in its ruins.  The standards of poetry are Shakespeare, Homer, Isaiah, and David.  The latest of the arts, music, culminated in composition, though not in execution, a century ago.

The mistress.  Yet culture in music certainly distinguishes the civilization of this age.  It has taken eighteen hundred years for the principles of the Christian religion to begin to be practically incorporated in government and in ordinary business, and it will take a long time for Beethoven to be popularly recognized; but there is growth toward him, and not away from him, and when the average culture has reached his height, some other genius will still more profoundly and delicately express the highest thoughts.

Herbert.  I wish I could believe it.  The spirit of this age is expressed by the Calliope.

The parson.  Yes, it remained for us to add church-bells and cannon to the orchestra.