Most of all, early history suggests how slow, and difficult, and uncertain a process is national growth; how easily the oak that has stood for centuries may be cut down; how impossible it is to fill its place. There was true wisdom in the admonition of the Doric mother to her son, "Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna." The study of the Past teaches us to be proud of the Present, although with no indiscriminating pride; and while it warns us that change is the law of social life, it also warns us that the character and the limits of that change are not arbitrary. Such will, I think, be the predominating sentiment in the mind of every one who, from the scattered fragments and faint memories of the Past, essays to—
"Spell the record of his long descent,
More largely conscious of the life that was."
