I said aloud, though more to myself than to Hammond, "Well, how could they be better than the age that made them ?" "True," he said, "but their pretensions were higher." "Were they ?" said I, smiling.
"You drive me from corner to corner," said he, smiling in turn.

"Let me say at least that they were a poor sequence to the aspirations of Oxford of 'the barbarous Middle Ages.'" "Yes, that will do," said I.
"Also," said Hammond, "what I have been saying of them is true in the main.

But ask on!" I said: "We have heard about London and the manufacturing districts and the ordinary towns: how about the villages ?" Said Hammond: "You must know that toward the end of the nineteenth century the villages were almost destroyed, unless where they became mere adjuncts to the manufacturing districts, or formed a sort of minor manufacturing districts 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.