I have no doubt that there is abundance of wholesome
affection and camaraderie within, of full-flavoured, local, personal
jests, all the outward signs and inner resources of sturdy British
prosperity. A certain civic pride exists, no doubt, in the ancient
buildings, in the influx of visitors, the envious admiration of
Americans. But, at first sight, what a difference between the old and
the new! The old, no doubt, stood for a few very wealthy and
influential people, priests and barons, with a wretched and
down-trodden poor, labouring like the beasts of the field for life. The
new order stands for a few wealthy people whose hearts are in their
amusements and social pleasures; a great, well-to-do, busy, comfortable
middle class, and a self-respecting and, on the whole, prosperous
artisan class. No one, surveying the change from the point of view of
human happiness, can doubt for an instant that the new order is far
richer in happiness, in comfort, and in contentment than the old.
And then, too, how easy it is to make the mistake of thinking that all
the grace of antiquity and mellowness that hangs about the old
buildings was part of the mediaeval world. Go back in fancy for a
little to the time when that great front of the Cathedral, with its
forests of towers and pinnacles, its three vast portals, was brand-new
and white, all free from the scaffolding, and fitting on so strangely
to the Norman work behind.
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