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"O Geordie!" exclaimed the king, "these are auld-warld frailties, of whilk we dare not pronounce even ourselves absolutely free. But the warld grows worse from day to day, Geordie. The juveniles of this age may weel say with the poet 'Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores
In the very moment in which the empire was ordering itself, civil wars ended; in that solemn Pax Romana which was to have endured so many ages, in the very moment in which the heart should have opened itself to hope and to joy, Horace describes, in three fine, terrible verses, four successive generations, each corrupting Rome, which grew ever the worse, ever the more perverse and evil-disposed: Aetas parentum, peior avis, tulit Nos nequiores, mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem.
Thus, what little virtue may remain in the mind of youth is contaminated by precept, as well as example; and the rising generation is in a fair way of being even more corrupted than that which has preceded it. "AEtas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores, mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem."
Yet a bigotry of belief in this idle notion has always prevailed amongst moralists, pagan alike and Christian. Horace, for example, informs us that "Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem." The last generation was worse, it seems, than the penultimate, as the present is worst than the last.
In our times we learned Latin because our books were in Latin; now you study Latin a little but have no Latin books. On the other hand, your books are in Castilian and that language is not taught aetas parentum pejor avis tulit nos nequiores! as Horace said." With this quotation he moved away majestically, like a Roman emperor. The youths smiled at each other.
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