For that we have still to wait a little while. The new order may have
gone far towards shaping itself, but just as in that sort of lantern
show that used to be known in the village as the "Dissolving Views," the
scene that is going remains upon the mind, traceable and evident, and
the newer picture is yet enigmatical long after the lines that are to
replace those former ones have grown bright and strong, so that the new
England of our children's children is still a riddle to me. The ideas
of democracy, of equality, and above all of promiscuous fraternity have
certainly never really entered into the English mind. But what IS coming
into it? All this book, I hope, will bear a little on that. Our people
never formulates; it keeps words for jests and ironies. In the meanwhile
the old shapes, the old attitudes remain, subtly changed and changing
still, sheltering strange tenants. Bladesover House is now let furnished
to Sir Reuben Lichtenstein, and has been since old Lady Drew died; it
was my odd experience to visit there, in the house of which my mother
had been housekeeper, when my uncle was at the climax of Tono-Bungay.
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