Thus fallen from their high estate, no longer regarded as solemn
rites on the punctual performance of which the welfare and even the
life of the community depend, they sink gradually to the level of
simple pageants, mummeries, and pastimes, till in the final stage of
degeneration they are wholly abandoned by older people, and, from
having once been the most serious occupation of the sage, become at
last the idle sport of children. It is in this final stage of decay
that most of the old magical rites of our European forefathers
linger on at the present day, and even from this their last retreat
they are fast being swept away by the rising tide of those
multitudinous forces, moral, intellectual, and social, which are
bearing mankind onward to a new and unknown goal. We may feel some
natural regret at the disappearance of quaint customs and
picturesque ceremonies, which have preserved to an age often deemed
dull and prosaic something of the flavour and freshness of the olden
time, some breath of the springtime of the world; yet our regret
will be lessened when we remember that these pretty pageants, these
now innocent diversions, had their origin in ignorance and
superstition; that if they are a record of human endeavour, they are
also a monument of fruitless ingenuity, of wasted labour, and of
blighted hopes; and that for all their gay trappings--their flowers,
their ribbons, and their music--they partake far more of tragedy
than of farce.
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