ermanence, of the old order which
"connects" the past with the present, the personal and individual with
the cosmopolitan and indifferent; it is the something sacred which
neither an individual nor a nation can afford to neglect. Mr. Forster,
impressed as he is with the need of change, directed instead of
haphazard, nevertheless perceives that there are permanent elements,
belonging to character, in our blood and our tradition, which cannot
be ignored without peril.

Mr. Galsworthy, in _The Patrician_, is no longer the mere antagonist
of the established order of things. He seems to have attained a sort
of optimism strangely at variance with his earlier views; to have
declared that running through all these conflicts, revolutions, and
evolutions there is and has been a certain national sense, a sort of
collective reasonableness, which is constantly making itself felt, and
being expressed in its best form by the leaders of opinion, the
aristocrats of nature; that the torrent runs, as it were, between
solid banks; that in the long run character triumphs over confusion.

3.

It would be folly to regret that the drama of modern life, of our
swiftly evolving modern society, has become absorbingly interesting to
so many of the best brains of the time. Although we may detect a
serious limitation to literature, a didacticism alien to the
disinterested spirit of art, still we cannot fail to see that a new
sort of vitality, belonging rather to the moral sense than the
intellect or the perceptions, has been infused into imaginative
literature. Something, at least, which is fresh and real and vital has
been introduced, exclusive of much that we have been accustomed to
regard as excellent, but serving surely to give a distinctive and far
from negligible character to the typical literature of our time. That
typical literature, in its most important manifestations, is concerned
with the events that are happening around us here and now--with ideas,
largely partisan, that give meaning to them--with the purposes that
direct and determine them. Criticism, if it is to be vital criticism,
cannot dissociate itself from those ideas, nor look on with sublime
indifference to opinions as to the true and the false, the desirable
and the undesirable.

But when we have said that, we are also bound to recognise the
drawbacks and serious limitations of the modern tendency. It
includes--and we come back to the point at which we started--a
tende