July 4.
Tue picture of changing London drawn by our correspondent to-day strikes one as singularly depressing. It suggests nothing but jazz, extravagance, unreality, a general rebellion against the ties of responsibility in any form, a feverish race for amusement at any cost. The decline of the old aristocracy, typified by the -elling up of town mansions, may be welcomed by a few. But a distinct change in the manner of regarding this class is observable in recent years. It is recognized that the bloated aristocracy Was scarcely founded in fact, and that the gilded and brainless duke had comparatively few examples outside musical comedy. On the other hand, it is recognized that the old landed gentry, the people with a stake in the country, took a serious view of the duties. of their position, which involved considerable duties to their neigh-bows; that as a class they discharged them conscientiously and that though perhaps slightly ridiculous in their veneration of property and a trifle tyrannical in their interpretation of the game laws, they were vastly preferable to the unpleasant and ill-bred persons who now figure so largely in the illustrated papers and whose mere appearance is enough to make a decent British working-man tum Bolshevist—if he were capable of doing so.
But it is the description that our correspondent gives of the type of entertainment now popular which may make us feel that, wherever we want to go, in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.