such accumulated wealth,
that eight per cent. had become three, and Forsytes were numbered by the
thousand! Morals had changed, manners had changed, men had become
monkeys twice-removed, God had become Mammon--Mammon so respectable as to
deceive himself: Sixty-four years that favoured property, and had made
the upper middle class; buttressed, chiselled, polished it, till it was
almost indistinguishable in manners, morals, speech, appearance, habit,
and soul from the nobility. An epoch which had gilded individual liberty
so that if a man had money, he was free in law and fact, and if he had
not money he was free in law and not in fact. An era which had canonised
hypocrisy, so that to seem to be respectable was to be. A great Age,
whose transmuting influence nothing had escaped save the nature of man
and the nature of the Universe.

And to witness the passing of this Age, London--its pet and fancy--was
pouring forth her citizens through every gate into Hyde Park, hub of
Victorianism, happy hunting-ground of Forsytes. Under the grey heavens,
whose drizzle just kept off, the dark concourse gathered to see the show.
The 'good old' Queen, full of years and virtue, had emerged from her
seclusion for the last time to make a London holiday. From Houndsditch,
Acton, Ealing, Hampstead, Islington, and Bethnal Green; from Hackney,
Hornsey, Leytonstone, Battersea, and Fulham; and from those green
pastures where Forsytes flourish--Mayfair and Kensington, St. James' and
Belgravia, Bayswater and Chelsea and the Regent's Park, the people
swarmed down on to the roads where death would presently pass with dusky
pomp and pageantry. Never again would a Queen reign so long, or people
have a chance to see so much history buried for their money. A pity the
war dragged on, and that the Wreath of Victory could not be laid upon her
coffin! All else would be there to follow and commemorate--soldiers,
sailors, foreign princes, half-masted bunting, tolling bells, and above
all the surging, great, dark-coated crowd, with perhaps a simple sadness
here and there deep in hearts beneath black clothes put on by regulation.
After all, more than a Queen was going to her rest, a woman who had
braved sorrow, lived well and wisely according to her lights.

Out in the crowd against the railings, with his arm hooked in Annette's,
Soames waited. Yes! the Age was passing! What with this Trade Unionism,
and Labour fellows in the House of Commons, with con