, or formed a sort of minor manufacturing district
themselves. Houses were allowed to fall into decay and actual ruin; trees were
cut down for the sake of the few shillings which the poor sticks would fetch;
the building became inexpressibly mean and hideous. Labour was scarce; but wages
fell nevertheless. All the small country arts of life which once added to the
little pleasures of country people were lost. The country produce which passed
through the hands of the husbandmen never got so far as their mouths. Incredible
shabbiness and niggardly pinching reigned over the fields and acres which, in
spite of the rude and careless husbandry of the times, were so kind and
bountiful. Had you any inkling of all this?«
    »I have heard that it was so,« said I; »but what followed?«
    »The change,« said Hammond, »which in these matters took place very early in
our epoch, was most strangely rapid. People flocked into the country villages,
and, so to say, flung themselves upon the freed land like a wild beast upon his
prey; and in a very little time the villages of England were more populous than
they had been since the fourteenth century, and were still growing fast. Of
course, this invasion of the country was awkward to deal with, and would have
created much misery, if the folk had still been under the bondage of class
monopoly. But as it was, things soon righted themselves. People found out what
they were fit for, and gave up attempting to push themselves into occupations in
which they must needs fail. The town invaded the country; but the invaders, like
the warlike invaders of early days, yielded to the influence of their
surroundings, and became country people; and in their turn, as they became more
numerous than the townsmen, influenced them also; so that the difference between
town and country grew less and less; and it was indeed this world of the country
vivified by the thought and briskness of town-bred folk which has produced that
happy and leisurely but eager life of which you have had a first taste. Again I
say, many blunders were made, but we have had time to set them right. Much was
left for the men of my earlier life to deal with. The crude ideas of the first
half of the twentieth century, when men were still oppressed by the fear of
poverty, and did not look enough to the present pleasure of ordinary daily life,
spoilt a great deal of what the commercial age had left us of external beauty:
and I admit that it was but slowly
