A CRYSTAL AGE

BY W. H. HUDSON




PREFACE

_Romances of the future, however fantastic they may be, have for most
of us a perennial if mild interest, since they are born of a very common
feeling--a sense of dissatisfaction with the existing order of things,
combined with a vague faith in or hope of a better one to come. The
picture put before us is false; we knew it would be false before looking
at it, since we cannot imagine what is unknown any more than we can
build without materials. Our mental atmosphere surrounds and shuts us in
like our own skins; no one can boast that he has broken out of that
prison. The vast, unbounded prospect lies before us, but, as the poet
mournfully adds, "clouds and darkness rest upon it." Nevertheless we
cannot suppress all curiosity, or help asking one another, What is your
dream--your ideal? What is your News from Nowhere, or, rather, what is
the result of the little shake your hand has given to the old pasteboard
toy with a dozen bits of colored glass for contents? And, most important
of all, can you present it in a narrative or romance which will enable
me to pass an idle hour not disagreeably? How, for instance, does it
compare in this respect with other prophetic books on the shelf?_

_I am not referring to living authors; least of all to that flamingo of
letters who for the last decade or so has been a wonder to our island
birds. For what could I say of him that is not known to every one--that