"DON QUIXOTE."
lxxiii
the future, let us hope so; for, it must be owned, its prophets do not encourage the idea that liveliness will be among its characteristics. The humor of Cervantes may have its uses too, even in that advanced state of society. The future, doubtless, will be great and good and wise and virtuous, but being still human, it will have its vanities and self-conceits, its shams, humbugs, and impostures, even as we have, or haply greater than ours, for everything, we are told, will be on a scale of which we have no conception; and against these there is no weapon so effective as the old-fashioned one with which Cervantes smote the great sham of his own day.
