Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/411

 human silence of the great waters, independent of storm or wind, truly one of the most wonderful developments of a wonderful age.

And still at the beginning of the twentieth century we await the air ship. It is now over sixty years since Tennyson prophesied its success:

The fulfilment will surely come, and that before very long now. But this age of transition and experiment has also been called an age of materialism. It has been stated again and again that commercial prosperity has raised England to a perilous height, and that with the wealth, luxury, and worldly ambitions that have come in its train, Englishmen have lost that faith to which their ancestors owed so much of their content and happiness; that commercial immorality has taken the place of the integrity that of old characterised our commerce and raised