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and a hatred of superstition are multiplying around us; but we look in vain for that most beautiful character of the past, so distrustful of self and so trustful of others, so rich in self-denial and modesty, so simple, so earnest, and so devout, which, even when, Ixion-like, it bestowed its affections upon a cloud, made its very illusions the source of some of the purest virtues of our nature. Its most beautiful displays are not in nations like the Americans or the modern French, who have thrown themselves most fully into the tendencies of this age, but rather in secluded regions, like Styria or the Tyrol. Its artistic expression is found in no work of modern genius, but in the mediaeval cathedral, which, mellowed but not impaired by time, still gazes on us in its deathless beauty through the centuries of the past".
Now, in the days of our old land, when constant struggles for existence promoted a spirit of individual effort—not dependence, but a character for independence—these qualities seem to be decading, not only in Australia, but also in the old land. The great prosperity in Great Britain in the last two generations has engendered in the present era an effeteness and dependence on others. The wealth of the erudite and ably commercial father, acquired by brain-power and daily toil, has, in Great Britain, come down to the sons, who, without the strenuous ordeal of individual effort, have in many cases relapsed into the ease begotten of bequeathed affluence and luxury. The same, to a certain extent, is true in Australia, though I must say that State aid to education is, I believe, having a most baneful effect on this country, through its indiscriminate favours, and especially so on the individual. The great principle of individual effort is being suppressed. There is an old saying, "There shall be hewers of wood and drawers of water". Such is the present constitution of this world that the hewers of wood and the drawers of water are constantly in conflict with the more suitable and better adapted classes, through a malign system of nepotism. The decay of independence, self-reliance, and individual effort is one of the things which are tending to sap our national greatness. I may say here
