Laudator Temporis Acti

Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), Provence: From Minstrels to the Machine (1935; rpt. New York: The Ecco Press, 1979), p. 121:

I am not, you understand, a pessimist: I don't want our civilization to pull through. I want a civilization of small men each labouring two small plots—his own ground and his own soul. Nothing else will serve my turn.

All the same, if you have once loved something it is at least sad and puzzling to return and find what was once confident, resolute and on the whole well-meaning become, not so much emaciated or enfeebled but just simply hopelessly puzzled—even as to the possibility of so much as being well-meaning. In my day we had King, Lords, Commons, the Book of Common Prayer, the London County Council, the Metropolitan Police, the Home Secretary—and Christ Jesus who had died to make us and our vast Empire what we were. Now all those first attributes of Londonism are as dim as figures seen through the steam from a kettle-spout.