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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.

'Summos posse viros, et magna exempla daturos, Vervecum in patria, crassoque sub are nasci. Now, if there is any similar alienation between our lowest classes and our highest, such as Doctor Arnold imagined to exist in England, at least it does not assume any such character of disgust, nor clothe itself in similar expressions of scorn.

Tester sixpence; from the French word, tete, a head: a piece of silver stamped with a head, which in old French was called "un testion," and which was about the value of an old English sixpence. Tester is used in Shakspeare. Summos posse viros, et magna exempla daturos, Vervecum in patria, crassoque sub aere nasci.

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.

Hoc interim cupimus esse penitus persuasum Excellentiae vestrae; nos sedulo operam daturos, vt in omni honorificae benignitatis humanitatisque genere, expectationi vestrae omni ex parte respondeamus.

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."

But restrain my idea within its due limits, and dictate like Solon the best laws which the infancy of the nineteenth century can bear or receive; this will abundantly suffice. Today the mox progeniem daturos vitiosiorem would make one's hair stand on end.

Every thing is debased and sophisticated, and "nothing is but what is not." All things are mixed, lowered, debased, deteriorated, by our cozening dealers and shopkeepers; and, bad as they are, there is every reason to fear that they are "mox daturos progeniem vitiosiorem."