Laudator Temporis Acti

Alfred Williams (1877-1930), A Wiltshire Village (London: Duckworth, 1912), p. 163:

The fact is, you are too full of thoughts of your own interest and advantage to care anything for us. One would think, to read the endless books and newspaper articles on matters and subjects relating to "industries" and "peoples," that there was nothing of these in existence outside the towns. Parliaments are elected for the towns; laws are passed for the towns; armies and navies are raised and built to protect the towns; wages, rights, privileges, arts and crafts, and everything else, are for the same. The dweller in the country—the humble agriculturist, the most honourable and most necessary of all workers, the alpha and omega, the beginning, end, and middle, the very backbone and support of every industry and all society, is forgotten, spurned, despised, and ridiculed. But the sun shines bright in the country; the birds sing, the flowers bloom, the trees cast their shadow, the wind breathes gently or pipes shrilly; here is simplicity, joy, and content, with no lust for more. In the towns are fever and fret, galled hearts and feelings, ceaseless agitation, classes and sects, furnaces and wheels, pushing and shoving, trampling under foot, very hell upon earth. Bravo for old Dudley Sansum and Jemmy Boulton, and the others who never knew the contagion! Freedom from it is like the primal state in the Garden of Eden, before Adam and Eve plucked the forbidden fruit.

Id., p. 284:

There is ten times greater slavery and bondage in towns and cities and manufactories than among the fields and hedgerows. That is where they cringe and fawn and grovel in servitude, and sigh and groan, shedding tears, and worshipping idols. Are the villagers really churlish and unsympathetic? Why, everyone speaks to everyone in country places, each to all, and all to each, strangers as well. That may be simplicity. I have heard it called extremely inconvenient, and a nuisance, which may be so, but it is the reverse of churlishness. No one speaks to you in the towns, on the other hand. There you may wander for hours, up and down, pushing and shoving with the crowd, or meeting with a sea of faces, but there is no greeting, no recognition, no smile of welcome; simply the cold stare, the vacant regard, the inquisitorial glance, or downright indifference.

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