Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/50

Counter-Currents sinned nearly two centuries too soon! And as if this were not a fate bitter enough for tears, he must needs have contrasted with him at every step an industrious companion, whom that unenlightened age permitted to work as hard as he pleased, even for the benefit of a master, and to build up his own fortunes on the foundation of his own worth. Hogarth's simple conception of personal responsibility and of personal equation is as obsolete as the clumsy looms at which his apprentices sit, and the full-skirted coats they wear.

Yet the softening of the hard old rules, the rigid old standards, has not tended to strengthen the fibre of our race. Nobody supposes that the industrious apprentice had an enjoyable boyhood. As far as we can see, going to church was his sole recreation, as it was probably the principal recreation of his master's daughter, whose hymn-book he shares, and whom he duly marries. Her 34