Centennial

“ With song, wit and wassail, and true hearts anigh.
⁠Centuria, Centuria, vivat Centuria!
Then love as they loved when thine eldest was young,
⁠Centuria!
O the comrades that gossipped and painted and sung,
O the smoke-cloud that lingers their places among!
⁠Centuria, Centuria, vivat Centuria!
And sing as they'll sing in thy fair years untold,
⁠Centuria,
Strong hearts that shall follow, as tender and bold;
We may fade, we shall pass, but thou growest not old ”

“ If we could affix to each century as characteristic a presentment as those portraits do of the steel-clad hero of Towton, or the be-wigged, be-buckled courtier of George the Second, our object would be gained. We should see a whole history in a glance at a century’s face. If it were peculiarly marked by nature or accident, so much the more easy would it be to recognise the likeness. If the century was a warlike, quarrelsome century, and had scars across its brow ”

“ TRUTH.
“A century is a formula; an epoch is an expressed thought. One such thought-expressed civilization passes to another. The centuries are the phrases of civilization; what she says here she does not repeat there. But these mysterious phrases are linked together: logic—the logos—is within them, and their series constitutes progress. In all these, phrase expressions of a single thought, the divine thought, we are slowly deciphering the word fraternity.
“All light is at some point condensed into a flame; likewise every epoch is condensed in a man. ”

“ Several recent circumstances have fixed attention on the great prominence of Old Age as a feature of our time:—Old Age, not coddled in cotton-wool, and kept warm by the fireside, but active, intelligent, efficient, and agreeable;—not only venerable through wealth of years, but admirable in its own character. Physiologists and statisticians tell us that the longevity of our own nation improves,—a marked increase in the length of life having been established within this century ”

“ It is surely worth while, therefore, to make an attempt to individualize the centuries, not by affixing to them any arbitrary marks of one’s own, but by taking notice of the distinguishing quality they possess, and grouping round that, as a centre, the incidents which either produce this characteristic or are produced by it. What should we call the present century, for instance? We should at once name it the Century of Invention. ”

“ If I could say a hundred years, now, my readers would accept all I had to tell them with a curious interest; but fifty years ago,—there are too many talkative old people who know all about that time, and at best half a century is a half-baked bit of ware. A coin-fancier would say that your fifty-year-old facts have just enough of antiquity to spot them with rust, and not enough to give them—the delicate and durable patina which is time's exquisite enamel. ”

“ Centuries have passed since you have been convened as you are today—in such numbers, in so great, so insistent, so mutual an interest, so absolutely as a nation and as Germans. Never again will you be so bidden. If you do not listen now and examine yourselves, if you again let these addresses pass you by as an empty tickling of the ears or as a strange prodigy, no human being will longer take account of you. ”

“ Its centenary draws nigh; and how fruitful in good to mankind has been that century which is now drawing to a close! It is unnecessary to repeat the hackneyed phrases which tell of the progress of the world during the last hundred years. Every newspaper speaks of it. Everybody with open eyes observes it. ”

“ The new century has come upon us with a rush of energy that no century has shown before. Let us stand aside for a moment that we may see what kind of a century it is to be, what is the work it has to do, and what manner of men it will demand to do it.
In most regards one century is like another. Just as men are men, so times are times. In the Twentieth Century there will be the same joys, the same sorrows, the same marrying and giving in marriage, the same round of work and play, of wisdom and duty, of folly and distress which other centuries have seen. ”

“ This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. ”

“ We have long admitted, it is true, a certain psychology of eras—a kind of 'soul' of certain times, or 'spirit' of certain ages, manifesting itself diversely in diverse periods. And, quite as the name of an individual not alone summons to the mind that individual and no other, but connotes a particular personality, so such wide phrases as 'The Elizabethan Age,' 'The Renaissance,' 'The Homeric Age,' the 'Age of Chivalry' do not alone designate certain ages, but in each case connote some essential quality which went to render that particular age memorable and significant. ”

“ The closing years of the nineties had been years of preparation and development—years of broadening minds and new ideas, until quite suddenly, it seemed, the century turned the corner, and yesterday became old-fashioned in a day, and all eyes were fixed on the glorious sunrise of the twentieth century—the wonderful century. ”

“ Can it be possible that half a century should have passed—fleeted by like a dream—as a tale that is told and that I should again stand here, looking at the work of my hands in that old time, whereof the memory is so fresh? ”

“ Is it to a decade of ten such little years as these now in his hand—ten of his mature years—that men give the dignity of a century? They call it an age; but what if life shows now so small that the word age has lost its gravity? ”

“ Let us talk of our college days, of our travels, of war, of soldiers, and of Italy!
XII.
We old classmates will many of us doubtless live to see the twentieth century. Strange thought! I know, of course, that the transition from nineteen hundred to nineteen hundred and one will seem as natural as that from ninety-nine to a hundred, or from this year to next. And yet it seems to me that to see the first dawn of the new century will be like reaching the summit of some high mountain, and looking out over new countries and new horizons. ”

“ ON THE ANCIENT AND MODERN INFLUENCE OF POETRY.
It is curious to observe how little one period resembles another. Centuries are the children of one mighty family, but here is no family-likeness between them. We ourselves are standing on the threshold of a new era, and we are already hastening to make as wide a space, mark as vast a difference as possible, between our own age and its predecessor. ”

“ We look upon a centenarian as a miracle of longevity, and he is careful to tell us his age if he have not lost the power of speech; but if the coats of poor men could speak, how much more marvellous in our eyes would their powers of life appear! ”

“ Half a century gives time to gather data, to measure losses, to calculate sacrifices, to weigh difficulties, to figure results, and to look calmly and justly at the history and the conduct of what must ever be classed as one of the great wars of the ages. ”

“ The respect for the Sixties was an article of faith, a dogma of dogmas in the Nineties. If the now younger generation write articles and books about the Nineties—those amazing documents in which I scarcely recognise an age I thought I knew by heart—we were still more zealous in writing books about the Sixties. ”

“ They see in it an entity of time with which the counting of years has little to do. Their somewhat mystical view is set forth in the following, which we quote from a communication that appeared in the "New York Times": "The centurial figures are the symbol, and the only symbol, of the centuries. Once every hundred years there is a change in the symbol, and this great secular event is of startling prominence. What more natural than to bring the century into harmony with its only visible mark? ”

“ At seventy or eighty, our lives are spent in recollections half a century old, but at ninety the privilege may be relaxed, and the unfortunate loiterer on the stage may claim to select a far more recent decade as his Golden Age, even if by weakening memory he confuses his second childhood with his first. ”

“ It is a melancholy thing to consider the aberrations of the human mind and heart which almost daily are brought before our eyes in one form or another. We call our century a great age, the age of improvement and enlightenment. ”

“ But is not the experience of one century as valuable as that of seven when we have to deal with real things? It ought to be more valuable, even as the injury of yesterday is more stinging than one of seven years ago. ”

“ The years from 1450 to 1500 are as important as the years from 1500 to 1550,—nay, to the thoughtful historian, that silent period of incubation is perhaps of deeper interest than the violent outburst of the sixteenth century. But where, during those years, are the men of sufficient eminence to represent the age in which they lived? ”

“ Centuries have been as but seconds in the life of an idle man in the forming of them; for centuries that have been to them but the winking of an eye they have raised their immemorial crests, and the centuries shall be as the sea-sand before they crumble. ”

“ THE SIXTIES, 1855–1870 CHAPTER I: THE NEW APPRECIATION AND THE NEW COLLECTOR
The borderland between the hallowed past and the matter-of-fact present is rarely attractive. It appeals neither to our veneration nor our curiosity. Its heroes are too recent to be deified, its secrets are all told. If you estimate a generation as occupying one-third of a century, you will find that to most people thirty-three years ago, more or less, is the least fascinating of all possible periods. ”

“ Mark the pageant of the Centuries.
The Eleventh Century enters from the right through the inner scene across which is now drawn a veil, so that the figures behind are seen, but not too distinctly, yet so that they shall be clearly discerned. Passing out of the inner scene to the right, they enter again on the left and cross the outer stage. There is stately music, varying to the passing of each, and ending in a march of triumph at the close. The Eleventh Century beckons, and there follows to her beckoning her meinie, to wit:
William the Conqueror. ”

“ Measuring epochs, or eras, by spaces of a hundred years each, that which embraces the nineteenth century stands out in sublime and encouraging contrast with any that has preceded it. As the legatee of all prior centuries, it has enlarged and ennobled its bequest to an extent unparalleled in history; while it has at the same time, through a genius and energy peculiar to itself, created an original endowment for its own enjoyment and for the future richer by far than any heretofore recorded. ”

“ A century which has no history and can have little or none. A century so opulent in accumulated falsities ... as never century before was! Which had no longer the consciousness of being false, so false had it grown ”

“ For most people the impossible would apparently be accomplished if a century so far back as the Thirteenth were to be even seriously thought of as the greatest of centuries. Evolution has come to be accepted so unquestioningly, that of course "we are the heirs of all the ages of the foremost files of time," and must be far ahead of our forbears, especially of the distant past, in everything. ”

“ Three-quarters of a century is so vast a span of human life, that the resemblance between the charming little boy of five in frills and the grey Professor of eighty, who might be his great-grandfather, though distinctly traceable, may not at first be visible to all. ”

“ She still lives, at the age of ninety-four, with the promises of centenary honors impressed upon her whole being. May Time, who has dealt so gently with her, bear her kindly to the goal of a hundred years! ”

“ The suggestion that the nineteenth century cannot yet be judged as to its final effect in many directions has already been made, and of nothing is this more true than of its Art. Of one phase of this period, however, we may speak with confidence. No other century of which we know the history has seen so many changes—such progress, or such energy of purpose so largely rewarded as in the century we are considering. ”

“ The whole century is like a great relic of the royal favorite.... She presides over that variety and that wide range of objects, so diverse in the universality of their type, that the eighteenth century created in her image to surround her existence, to serve her and to adorn her. ”

“ King, lords, and aristocrats; landholders, tithe-collectors, church and state, thank God, will soon be overthrown, and the golden age revived—the millennium—the true millennium—not what your poor mother talked about. ”

“ Standing here amid the sacred memories of the first, on the golden threshold of the second, I ask, Will the second century be as grand as the first? I believe it will, because we are growing more and more humane. ”

“ Each century has its special ideal, the ideal of the nineteenth is a young man. The seventeenth century is only woman—see the tapestries, the delightful goddesses who have discarded their hoops and heels to appear in still more delightful nakedness, the noble woods, the tall castles, with the hunters looking round; no servile archaeology chills the fancy, it is but a delightful whim; and this treatment of antiquity is the highest proof of the genius of the seventeenth century. ”

“ The progeny from heaven now descends. Be thou propitious to the Infant Boy by whom first the Iron Age shall expire, and the Golden Age over the whole world shall commence. Whilst thou, O Pollio, art consul, this glory of our age shall be made manifest, and the celestial months begin their revolutions. ”

“ Nor must it be thought the high opinion of the century is derived from the fact that only a very few examples of its illumination and bookmaking are now extant, and that these being the chosen specimens give the illumination of the century a higher place than it might otherwise have. ”