and to receive his blessing.

LIV

The other day I was at Peterborough, and strolled into the Close under
a fine, dark, mouldering archway, to find myself in a romantic world,
full of solemn dignity and immemorial peace. There in its niche stood
that exquisite crumbled statue that Flaxman said summed up the grace of
mediaeval art. The quiet canonical houses gave me the sense of stately
and pious repose; of secluded lives, cheered by the dignity of worship
and the beauty of holiness. And then presently I was in the long new
street leading out into the country; the great junction with its forest
of signals, where the expresses come roaring in and out, and the huge
freight-trains clank north and south. The street itself, with its rows
of plane-trees, its big brick-built chapels, its snug comfortable
houses, with the electric trams gliding smoothly under the crossing
wires--what a picture it gave of the new democracy, with its simple
virtues, its easy prosperity, its cheerful lack of taste, of romance!
Life runs easily enough, no doubt, in these contented homes, with their
regular meals, their bright ugly furniture, their friendly gossip,
their new clothes; for amusement the bicycle, the gramophone, the
circulating novel. I have no doubt that there is abundance of wholesome
affection and camaraderie within, of full-flavoured, local, personal
jests, all the outward signs and inner resources of sturdy British
prosperity. A certain civic pride exists, no doubt, in the ancient
buildings, in the influx of visitors, the envious admiration of
Americans. But, at first sight, what a difference between the old and
the new! The old, no doubt, stood for a few very wealthy and
influential people, priests and barons, with a wretched and
down-trodden poor, labouring like the beasts of the field for life. The
new order stands for a few wealthy people whose hearts are in their
amusements and social pleasures; a great, well-to-do, busy, comfortable
middle class, and a self-respecting and, on the whole, prosperous
artisan class. No one, surveying the change from the point of view of
human happiness, can doubt for an instant that the new order is far
richer in happiness, in comfort, and in contentment than the old.

And then, too, how easy it is to make the mistake of thinking that all
the grace of antiquity and mellowness that hangs about the old
buildings was part of the mediaeval world. Go back in fancy for a
little to the time w