CHAPTER II--_The Man in Green_.
Very few words are needed to explain why London, a hundred years hence, will be very like it is now, or rather, since I must slip into a prophetic past, why London, when my story opens, was very like it was in those enviable days when I was still alive.
The reason can be stated in one sentence.

The people had absolutely lost faith in revolutions.

All revolutions are doctrinal--such as the French one, or the one that introduced Christianity.

For it stands to common sense that you cannot upset all existing things, customs, and compromises, unless you believe in something outside them, something positive and divine.

Now, England, during this century, lost all belief in this.