upon all necessary things: rather it
was the pouring of the whole soul of passionately conscious art
especially into unnecessary things. Luxury was made alive with a soul.
We must remember this real thirst for beauty; for it is an
explanation--and an excuse.

The old barony had indeed been thinned by the civil wars that closed at
Bosworth, and curtailed by the economical and crafty policy of that
unkingly king, Henry VII. He was himself a "new man," and we shall see
the barons largely give place to a whole nobility of new men. But even
the older families already had their faces set in the newer direction.
Some of them, the Howards, for instance, may be said to have figured
both as old and new families. In any case the spirit of the whole upper
class can be described as increasingly new. The English aristocracy,
which is the chief creation of the Reformation, is undeniably entitled
to a certain praise, which is now almost universally regarded as very
high praise. It was always progressive. Aristocrats are accused of being
proud of their ancestors; it can truly be said that English aristocrats
have rather been proud of their descendants. For their descendants they
planned huge foundations and piled mountains of wealth; for their
descendants they fought for a higher and higher place in the government
of the state; for their descendants, above all, they nourished every new
science or scheme of social philosophy. They seized the vast economic
chances of pasturage; but they also drained the fens. They swept away
the priests, but they condescended to the philosophers. As the new Tudor
house passes through its generations a new and more rationalist
civilization is being made; scholars are criticizing authentic texts;
sceptics are discrediting not only popish saints but pagan philosophers;
specialists are analyzing and rationalizing traditions, and sheep are
eating men.

We have seen that in the fourteenth century in England there was a real
revolution of the poor. It very nearly succeeded; and I need not conceal
the conviction that it would have been the best possible thing for all
of us if it had entirely succeeded. If Richard II. had really sprung
into the saddle of Wat Tyler, or rather if his parliament had not
unhorsed him when he had got there, if he had confirmed the fact of the
new peasant freedom by some form of royal authority, as it was already
common to confirm the fact of the Trade Unions by the form of a royal
ch