early in our epoch, was most strangely rapid. People flocked into
the country villages, and, so to say, flung themselves upon the freed
land like a wild beast upon his prey; and in a very little time the
villages of England were more populous than they had been since the
fourteenth century, and were still growing fast. Of course, this
invasion of the country was awkward to deal with, and would have
created much misery, if the folk had still been under the bondage of
class monopoly. But as it was, things soon righted themselves.
People found out what they were fit for, and gave up attempting to
push themselves into occupations in which they must needs fail. The
town invaded the country; but the invaders, like the warlike invaders
of early days, yielded to the influence of their surroundings, and
became country people; and in their turn, as they became more
numerous than the townsmen, influenced them also; so that the
difference between town and country grew less and less; and it was
indeed this world of the country vivified by the thought and
briskness of town-bred folk which has produced that happy and
leisurely but eager life of which you have had a first taste. Again
I say, many blunders were made, but we have had time to set them
right. Much was left for the men of my earlier life to deal with.
The crude ideas of the first half of the twentieth century, when men
were still oppressed by the fear of poverty, and did not look enough
to the present pleasure of ordinary daily life, spoilt a great deal
of what the commercial age had left us of external beauty: and I
admit that it was but slowly that men recovered from the injuries
that they inflicted on themselves even after they became free. But
slowly as the recovery came, it DID come; and the more you see of us,
the clearer it will be to you that we are happy. That we live amidst
beauty without any fear of becoming effeminate; that we have plenty
to do, and on the whole enjoy doing it. What more can we ask of