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Born in 1823, died in 1893; graduated from Harvard in 1844; studied law, but abandoned it for literature; his eyesight so defective he was nearly blind; professor at Harvard in 1871-72; published his "Conspiracy of Pontiac" in 1851, "Pioneers of France in the New World" in 1865, "Jesuits in North America" in 1867, "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West" in 1869, "The Old Régime in Canada" in 1874, "Count Frontenac" in 1877, "Montcalm and Wolfe" in 1884, "A Half-Century of Conflict" in 1892.
Such appellations, without a doubt, are stimulating and glamorous. But if the streets themselves have seen a scavenger's broom within the last half-century, I am much mistaken. The goddess "Hygeia" dost not figure among their names, nor yet that Byzantine Monarch whose infantile exploit might be re-enacted in ripest maturity without attracting any attention in San Demetrio.
New Year's came in with a ringing of bells and firing of pistols. Four years more, and the world would reach the half-century mark. That seemed very ancient to the little girl in Old New York. They talked about it at the breakfast-table. "Do you suppose any one could live to see nineteen hundred?" asked the little girl, with wondering eyes. Father Underhill laughed.
The bolts Emerson forged, his thought, his wit, his perception, are not provincial. They were found to carry inspiration to England and Germany. Many of the important men of the last half-century owe him a debt. It is not yet possible to give any account of his influence abroad, because the memoirs which will show it are only beginning to be published.
But I do not know that the Primrose League is any improvement upon it, and I fancy that when the Duke of Rutland looks back across the half-century he sees something to smile at, but nothing to blush for. One of the notions that Young England had got hold of was that famous saying of Fletcher of Saltoun's friend about making the ballads of a people.
John Griffith had been a tenant on the estate for the last half-century, and was an older man than his landlord; but the baronet spoke of all this as though he himself were about to leave Wharton for ever in the course of the next week. "John Griffith has been a good man, and if not always quite ready with his rent, has never been much behind. You won't be hard on John Griffith?"
The cattle had made a path on the clay and the grass had grown in soft and blue-green in the shade. In sapling days, the great trees had woven their trunks on either side of a rail-fence that had stood for a half-century. It was an approach to the farm-house that an artist would have named an estate after or a province.
After shunning Anthony Trollope for fifty years, we came to him, almost as with a rush, long after our half-century was past.
It would be impossible for women not to be affected by this spirit of unrest, especially as they have made greater advance during the last few decades than any other class or body. There is none whose status has been so revolutionized in every respect during the last half-century.
It may be thought probable, that, for the last half-century, the process of subdivision in England has been retarded, if not reversed; that the great weight of taxation has compelled many of the lesser freeholders to dispose of their estates, and to seek employment in the army and navy, in the professions of civil life, in commerce, or in the colonies.
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