character, thus far. One
notes the obvious: decline of conventional religion, free discussion of
the old moral standards; therewith, a growth of materialism which favours
every anarchic tendency. Is it to be feared that self-righteousness may
be degenerating into the darker vice of true hypocrisy? For the English
to lose belief in themselves--not merely in their potential goodness, but
in their pre-eminence as examples and agents of good--would mean as
hopeless a national corruption as any recorded in history. To doubt
their genuine worship, in the past, of a very high (though not, of
course, the highest) ethical ideal, is impossible for any one born and
bred in England; no less impossible to deny that those who are rightly
deemed "best" among us, the men and women of gentle or humble birth who
are not infected by the evils of the new spirit, still lead, in a very
true sense, "honest, sober, and godly" lives. Such folk, one knows, were
never in a majority, but of old they had a power which made them
veritable representatives of the English _ethos_. If they thought highly
of themselves, why, the fact justified them; if they spoke, at times, as
Pharisees, it was a fault of temper which carried with it no grave
condemnation. Hypocrisy was, of all forms of baseness, that which they
most abhorred. So is it still with their descendants. Whether these
continue to speak among us with authority, no man can certainly say. If
their power is lost, and those who talk of English hypocrisy no longer
use the word amiss, we shall soon know it.

XXII.

It is time that we gave a second thought to Puritanism. In the heyday of
release from forms which had lost their meaning, it was natural to look
back on that period of our history with eyes that saw in it nothing but
fanatical excess; we approved the picturesque phrase which showed the
English mind going into prison and having the key turned upon it. Now,
when the peril of emancipation becomes as manifest as was the hardship of
restraint, we shall do well to remember all the good that lay in that
stern Puritan discipline, how it renewed the spiritual vitality of our
race, and made for the civic freedom which is our highest national
privilege. An age of intellectual glory is wont to be paid for in the
general decline of that which follows. Imagine England under Stuart
rule, with no faith but the Protestantism of the Tudor. Imagine (not to
think of worse) English liter