Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1894 — FROM MOUNTAIN TO PLAIN. [ARTICLE]

FROM MOUNTAIN TO PLAIN.

Modern Civilization Brings This Change in Human Habitation. In describing the picturesque rock-bound I taiian cities between Sorrento and Amalfi, in the July number of the Century, Marion Crawford says-: It sometimes seems as though mqd.ern civilization tended, broadly speaking, to transfer life from the mountains to the plains, leaving behind just what we are pleased to call romance. In other days no man, as a rule, built in plain or valley when he could possibly build on a hill. Now, no one who can dwell in the plains takes the trouble to live on the top of the mountain, unless for some very particular reason. The security that once lay in stone walls and iron bars is now sought in strategic position and in earthworks. There are no small, daily dangers in our time against which man barricades himself in towers, and behind iron-studded doors of oak. The great perils of our age arc few, far beween. and general. Military power once mean t an agglomeration of desperate individuals devoted io a common cause, bad or good, pot one of whom could find a place in the well ordered', unreasoning, and mechanically obedient ranks of a modern conqueror’s army. The more we live in plains the less we can understand the hills; the more systematically we obey laws and regulations having for their object the greatest good of the greatest number, the less able are we to understand the reasoning of such men as Alaric, the great Count of Sicily, Tancred, Caesar Borgia, Gonzalvo de Cordova, or Garibaldi. It is singular that while most intelligent people undoubtedly prefer the* conditions of modern civilization for) their daily life, they should by preference also like to dream of the times when civilization was still unrealized, and of lives lived in circumstances against which modern common sense revolts. These are ma-chine-made times; those were handmade; and true art is manual, not mechanical.