where the gentle-folk kept town-houses and did their greater shopping
under the magnificent shadow of the greatest of all fine gentlewomen,
the Queen. It seemed to be in the divine order. That all this fine
appearance was already sapped, that there were forces at work that might
presently carry all this elaborate social system in which my mother
instructed me so carefully that I might understand my "place," to Limbo,
had scarcely dawned upon me even by the time that Tono-Bungay was fairly
launched upon the world.

There are many people in England to-day upon whom it has not yet dawned.
There are times when I doubt whether any but a very inconsiderable
minority of English people realise how extensively this ostensible order
has even now passed away. The great houses stand in the parks still,
the cottages cluster respectfully on their borders, touching their eaves
with their creepers, the English countryside--you can range through Kent
from Bladesover northward and see persists obstinately in looking what
it was. It is like an early day in a fine October. The hand of change
rests on it all, unfelt, unseen; resting for awhile, as it were half
reluctantly, before it grips and ends the thing for ever. One frost and
the whole face of things will be bare, links snap, patience end, our
fine foliage of pretences lie glowing in the mire.

For that we have still to wait a little while. The new order may have
gone far towards shaping itself, but just as in that sort of lantern
show that used to be known in the village as the "Dissolving Views," the
scene that is going remains upon the mind, traceable and evident, and
the newer picture is yet enigmatical long after the lines that are to
replace those former ones have grown bright and strong, so that the new
England of our children's children is still a riddle to me. The ideas
of democracy, of equality, and above all of promiscuous fraternity have