_"Antiquitas Saeculi Juventus Mundi"_ (Vols. ii. and iii. _passim_).--The
following instances of this thought occur in two writers of the seventeenth
century:
"Those times which we term vulgarly they Old World, were indeed the
youth or adolescence of it ... if you go to the age of the world in
general, and to the true length and longevity of things, we are
properly the older cosmopolites. In this respect the cadet may be
termed more ancient than his elder brother, because the world was older
when he entered into it. Nov. 2, 1647."--Howell's _Letters_, 11th
edit.: London, 1754, p.426.
Butler, in his _character_ of "An Antiquary," observes:
"He values things wrongfully upon their antiquity, forgetting that the
most modern are really the most ancient of all things in the world;
like those that reckon their pounds before their shillings and pence,
of which they are made up."--Thyer's edit., vol.ii. p. 97.