ation that
preceded Chesterton. He cursed it in the dedication to Mr. E. C. Bentley
of _The Man who was Thursday_, and he remained true to the point of view
expressed in that curse for ever afterwards.

A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul, when we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity, and art admired decay;
The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay.
Round us in antic order their crippled vices came--
Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.
Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom,
Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.
Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung;
The world was very old indeed when you and I were young.
They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:
Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.

The Chestertonian decadence was not even an all-round falling-off.
If anybody were to make the statement that in the year
nineteen-hundred-and-something Chesterton produced his worst work it
would be open to anybody else to declare, with equal truth, that in the
same year Chesterton produced his best work. And the year in which these
extremes met would be either 1913 or 1914, the years of _Father Brown_
and _The Flying Inn_ on one hand, and of _Father Brown_ and some of the
songs of _The Flying Inn_ on the other. It was not a technical decline,
but the period of certain intellectual wearinesses, when Chesterton's
mental resilience failed him for a time, and he welcomed with too much
enthusiasm the nasty ideas from which no man is wholly free.

The main feature indeed of this period of decadence is the brandishing
about of a whole mass of antipathies. A man is perfectly entitled to
hate what he will, but it is generally assumed that the hater has some
ideas on the subject of the reform of the hatee. But Chesterton is as
devoid of suggestions as a goat is of modesty. A man may have a violent
objection against women earning their own livings, and yet be regarded
as a reasonable being if he has any alternative proposals for the
well-being of the unendowed and temporarily or permanently
unmarriageable woman, with no relatives able to support her--and there
are two or three millions of such women in the United Kingdom. But a
mere "Yo