(including a champion “nine” feet high called Grace) fighting their mimic battle arrayed in white flannels and curiously coloured caps, at a place called Lords, the exact site of which is now, alas I lost in the sea of houses; when as an absolute fact the first news men turned to on opening their daily papers in the morning was the column devoted to cricket, football, or horse-racing; when in the good old days, before electricity and the motor-car caused the finest specimen of the brute creation to become virtually extinct (although a few may still be seen at the Zoological Gardens), horse-racing for a cup and a small fortune in gold was only second to cricket and football in the estimation of all merrie Englanders—­the only races now indulged in being those of flying machines to Mars and back twice a day.  Two hundred years hence, I say, the Victorian era—­time of blessed peace and unexampled prosperity—­will be pronounced by all unprejudiced judges as the true days of merrie England.  Let us, then, though not unmindful of the past, pin our faith firmly on the present and the future. Carpe diem should be our motto in these fleeting times, and, above all, progress, not retrogression.  Let us, as the old, old sound of the village bells comes to us over the rolling downs this New Year’s eve, recall to mind

           “.... the primal sympathy
     Which having been must ever be.”

Let our hearts warm to the battle cry of advancing civilisation and the attainment of the ideal humanity, soaring upwards step by step, re-echoing the prayer contained in those lilting stanzas with which Tennyson greets the New Year: 

“Ring out the old, ring in the new;
Ring happy bells across the snow: 
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

     “Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
        For those that here we see no more
        Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
      Ring in redress to all mankind.

     “Ring out false pride in place and blood,
        The civic slander and the spite;
        Ring in the love of truth and right;
      Ring in the common love of good.

     “Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
        Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
        Ring out the thousand wars of old,
      Ring in the thousand years of peace.

     “Ring in the valiant man and free,
        The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
        Ring out the darkness of the land. 
      Ring in the Christ that is to be.”

[Illustration:  Coln S’ Aldwyns 429.png]

CHAPTER XVIII.

WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN.

     “I saw Eternity the other night
      Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
        All calm, as it was bright:—­
      And round beneath it, time in hours, days, years,
        Driven by the spheres,
      Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world
        And all her train were hurl’d.”