porary judgments.
Surely only the worst of them were as bad as that. But I must admit that
they were mostly prigs, and that they _were_ commercial. I said aloud,
though more to myself than to Hammond, "Well, how could they be better
than the age that made them?"

"True," he said, "but their pretensions were higher."

"Were they?" said I, smiling.

"You drive me from corner to corner," said he, smiling in turn. "Let me
say at least that they were a poor sequence to the aspirations of Oxford
of 'the barbarous Middle Ages.'"

"Yes, that will do," said I.

"Also," said Hammond, "what I have been saying of them is true in the
main. But ask on!"

I said: "We have heard about London and the manufacturing districts and
the ordinary towns: how about the villages?"

Said Hammond: "You must know that toward the end of the nineteenth
century the villages were almost destroyed, unless where they became mere
adjuncts to the manufacturing districts, or formed a sort of minor
manufacturing districts themselves. Houses were allowed to fall into
decay and actual ruin; trees were cut down for the sake of the few
shillings which the poor sticks would fetch; the building became
inexpressibly mean and hideous. Labour was scarce; but wages fell
nevertheless. All the small country arts of life which once added to the
little pleasures of country people were lost. The country produce which
passed through the hands of the husbandmen never got so far as their
mouths. Incredible shabbiness and niggardly pinching reigned over the
fields and acres which, in spite of the rude and careless husbandry of
the times, were so kind and bountiful. Had you any inkling of all this?"

"I have heard that it was so," said I "but what followed?"

"The change," said Hammond, "which in these matters took place very 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 whi