novelty in which lies the secret of life, as well as of art.
An aristocracy which is merely an aristocracy because it is "old"—whether it is an aristocracy of families, or of races, or of species—has already ceased to be an aristocracy in any sound meaning of the term. We need not regret its disappearance.
Do not, therefore, let us waste our time in crying over the dead roses of the summer that is past. There is something morbid in the perpetual groaning over that inevitable decay which is itself a part of all life.
Such a perpetual narrow insistence on one aspect of life is scarcely sane. One suspects that these people are themselves of those stocks over whose fate they grieve. Let us, therefore, mercifully leave them to manure their dead roses in peace. They will soon be forgotten.
The world is for ever dying. The world is also for ever bursting with life. The spring song of Sursum corda easily overwhelms the dying autumnal wails of the Dies Iræ.