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xvi
SOCIAL LIFE IN ENGLAND
have been substituted for rushes, electric light for tallow dips, forks for fingers, railway for coach, mercy for brutality—yet behind these external changes, transitory by reason of the law of progress, lies unchangeable human nature, ever the same with its hopes and fears, its capacity for joy and sorrow. Across the dim ages move the same men and women as to-day; they are clad in different garments, they eat a coarser food, they move amid different surroundings; but through the "enchanted twilights of the Past" we recognise our very selves,
"Till only what is Past and gone doth seem
To live, and all the Present is a dream."
