“A hard life”? Yes, in a way, but its hardness was more than balanced by what it gave: self-respect, liberty, freedom from the tyranny and oppression of outside forces; above all, _character_, and of a strength and simplicity and fineness it would be hard to match today. I do not doubt that country and village life as it was then in the North, and had been in the South until ten years before (not as it had become in another twenty years when the new forces had begun to seep in), was more productive of real happiness and of sterling character than has been any form of life that has developed since. Of course there was the other side to the case. Life then, good as it was, lacked some of the qualities that existed in the Middle Ages, the loss of which was a serious handicap. There was a hard and unlovely religion, the arts had wholly disappeared, and the exquisite environment man had always made for himself had vanished from life. The stimulus and the vital communal sense of the old guilds, the games, the merrymaking, the living religious practices, had faded into a colder and more austere neighbourliness. The comradeship of pilgrimage and common adventure and “church ales” had vanished utterly, and in every way life was becoming more drab and colourless. Much remained, however, though in a vanishing estate, of the clean and simple and wholesome life of a dead past, and in comparison with the common life of today, on the farm, in the factory, in village or great city, it must commend itself in such degree that many sacrifices are worth while if we can win it back. Win it back, but not as it stood then. Out of a farther past must come many things to enrich its content and make more beautiful its condition. Out of the present must come much also. An archæological or artificial restoration would be as undesirable as it is impossible. What modernism has given--or sold--that is in itself good, must be retained, and this is much. The trouble is the good is so intricately mixed with the bad that the untangling seems almost hopeless. Since our standard of comparative values is so distorted we have no sound basis from which we can set to work. Only through the process of what is really a new spiritual enlightenment, manifesting itself through both religion and philosophy, can the task be accomplished, for no ingenious engine, no clever device, no political panacea will prove even of temporary value. Probably the control of this spiritual stimulus is out of our hands; it usually is, being granted to men at times, at other times withheld. While we await the issue we can at least try humbly, and perhaps doubtfully, if we cannot take the first steps towards earning the indispensable boon, and it may be the first step will be into Walled Towns. IV