en:

_Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo._

Two things therefore are clear: men are a family, and the family is to
be poor. Almost as clear to me is the coming of the day when we shall
slough the ragged skin of empire and become again a small, hardy,
fishing and pastoral people. The profiteers will leave us, like
rats and their parasites. We shall be able to feed ourselves by our
industry. We shall be contented, and as happy as men with inordinate
desires and subordinate capacities can ever hope to be. There is no
reason to suppose that we need cease to be a nursery of heroes,
that our old men will not see visions or our young men dream dreams.
Neither vision nor dream will be the worse for having its bottom in
truth.

CATNACHERY

Catnach was a dealer in ballads. His stock line was the murderer's
confession, and his standard price half a crown. I don't know that
there is a Catnach now, or a market for Catnachery, but people collect
the old ones. You find them in county anthologies, with one of which
"_The Kentish Garland_, Vol. II., edited by Julia H.L. de Voynes,
Hertford: Stephen Austin and Sons, 1882," I lately spent a pleasant
morning in a friend's house. I should have liked Volume I., though it
could not by any possibility have contained worse matter. That is my
only consolation for missing it, because there are bad things and bad
things, and if a thing of literature is bad enough, it may well be as
entertaining as the best. I have long felt that there was a future for
_Half-hours with the Worst Authors_. It might prove a goldmine to a
resolute editor, and I hope I am not betraying a friend when I say
that one of mine has laid the footings of such a collection as may
some day add lustre to his name.[A] If I don't mistake, I can put him
on to a thing or two now which he will be glad of.

[Footnote A: He is here following Edward FitzGerald.]

Every bad ballad has its archetype in a good one, and all ballads
of whatsoever quality, can be pigeonholed under subjects, whether
of content or of treatment. My first specimen from Kent could be
classified as the Ballad Encomiastic, or, at will, as the Ballad of
Plain Statement, in which latter case it would be considered as a
ballad proper and derive itself _passim_ from Professor Child's
book. In the former case you would have to go back to Homer for its
original. It calls itself "An Epitaphe"--which it could not be--"uppon
the death of the noble and f