Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429, by Various

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Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429
Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852

Author: Various

Editor: Robert Chambers and William Chambers

Release Date: December 14, 2005 [EBook #17303]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.

NO. 429. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 1852. PRICE 1-1/2_d._

THINGS IN EXPECTATION.

The passing age is acknowledged to be remarkable in various respects.
Great advances in matters of practical science; a vast development of
individual enterprise, and general prosperity;--at the same time,
strange retardations in things of social concern; a singular want of
earnestness in carrying out objects of undeniable utility. Much
grandeur, but also much meanness of conception; much wealth, but also
much poverty. A struggle between greatness and littleness;
intelligence and ignorance; light and darkness. Sometimes we feel as
if going forward, sometimes as if backward. One day, we seem as if
about to start a hundred years in advance; on the next, all is wrong
somewhere, and we feel as if hurriedly retreating to the eighteenth
century!

Upon the whole, however, we are ourselves inclined to look at the
bright side of affairs; and in doing so, we are not without hope of
being able to make some proselytes. Let us just see what are the
prospects of the next twenty years--a long enough space for a man to
look forward to in anything else than a dream. War, it is true, may
intervene, or some other terrible catastrophe; but we shall not admit
this into our hypothesis, which proceeds on the assumption, that
although people may wrangle here and there, and here and there fly at
each other's throats, still the bulk of civilised mankind will go on
tranquilly enough to present no d