of yours are as interesting as fossils in a bed of old
blue clay. Such things are to be found, I believe, imbedded in the
works of Ruskin and other patrons of the democracy. Why, you are like
a man who sits in a comfortable first-class carriage in a great
express, complacently thinking that the money he has paid for his
ticket is the motive force of the train; you are trying to put out a
conflagration with a bottle of eau-de-Cologne. The battle is lost, and
the world is transforming itself, while you talk so airily. You and
other leisurely people are tolerated, just as a cottager lets the
houseleek grow on his tiles; but you are not part of the building, and
if there is a suspicion that you are making the roof damp, you will
have to be swept away. The democracy that you want to form is making
itself, and sooner or later you will have to join in the procession."

Hugh laughed serenely at his companion's vehemence. "Oh," he said, "I
am a mild sort of socialist myself; that is, I see that it is coming, I
believe in equality, and I don't question the rights of the democracy.
But I don't pretend to like it, though I bow to it; the democracy seems
to me to threaten nearly all the things that are to me most
beautiful--the woodland chase, the old house among its gardens, the
village church among its elms, the sedge-fringed pool, the wild
moorland--and all the pleasant varieties, too, of the human spirit, its
fantastic perversities, its fastidious reveries, its lonely dreams.
All these must go, of course; they are luxuries to which no individual
has any right; we must be drilled and organised; we must do our share
of the work, and take our culture in a municipal gallery, or through
cheap editions of the classics. No doubt we shall get the 'joys in
widest commonalty spread' of which Wordsworth speaks; and the only
thing that I pray is that I may not be there to see it."

"You are a fine specimen of the individualist," said Sheldon, "and I
have no desire to convert you--indeed we speak different languages, and
I doubt if you could understand me; there is to be no such levelling as
you suppose, rather the other way indeed; we shall not be able to do
without individualism, only it will be pleasantly organised. The
delightful thing to me is to observe that you are willing to let us
have a little of your culture at your own price, but we shall not want
it; we shall have our own culture, and it will be a much bigger and
finer