the fact that Tom was exceedingly handsome in an Italian way, having
"an extraordinary resemblance to the usual Italian type of the
Saviour." Also, without doubt, he voiced, though inanely, the innate
resentment of the English peasant against the great sixteenth century
robber families and their sycophants. These great families, now on
their last legs and about to be torn in pieces by a host, financial
and disgusting, without creed or nationality, seven times worse than
they, laughed at Tom. They do not laugh at those who, about to compass
their destruction, led by another Celt, have digged a pit into which
they trample headlong, and astonishing as it might seem, to the regret
of that very peasantry which has hated them for so long. At least, and
let us remember this, if they were greedy and unscrupulous their vices
were ours, something we could understand. They were of our blood, we
took the same things for granted, had the same prejudices, and after
all the same sense of justice. They with us were a part of Europe and
looked to Rome as their ancestor and original. But those who are about
to displace them! Alas, whence do they come who begat them, from what
have they issued out? I cannot answer; but I know that with all their
faults, their sacrilege, robbery, and treason, Russell, Cavendish,
Cecil and Talbot are English names, and they who bear them men of our
blood, European, too, and of our civilisation. But who are those that
now begin to fill their places? Aliens, Orientals and worse now
received without surprise into the peerage of England and the great
offices of justice. And the names which recall Elizabeth and whose
syllables are a part of our mother tongue, are obliterated by such
jargon as these.

These are miserable thoughts to come to a man on the road to
Canterbury, but they are inevitable to-day in England of my heart. The
new times belong to them. Let us then return to the old time before