And as this
question is one of great interest in its relations to the choice of
various modes of decoration, it will be necessary to enter into it at
some length.
The benevolent regards and purposes of men in masses seldom can be
supposed to extend beyond their own generation. They may look to
posterity as an audience, may hope for its attention, and labour for
its praise: they may trust to its recognition of unacknowledged merit,
and demand its justice for contemporary wrong. But all this is mere
selfishness, and does not involve the slightest regard to, or
consideration of, the interest of those by whose numbers we would fain
swell the circle of our flatterers, and by whose authority we would
gladly support our presently disputed claims. The idea of self-denial
for the sake of posterity, of practising present economy for the sake
of debtors yet unborn, of planting forests that our descendants may
live under their shade, or of raising cities for future nations to
inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently takes place among publicly
recognized motives of exertion. Yet these are not the less our duties;
nor is our part fitly sustained upon the earth, unless the range of our
intended and deliberate usefulness include, not only the companions but
the successors, of our pilgrimage.
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