He began to walk on again towards Hyde Park Corner. No greater change in all England than in the Row! Born almost withinhail of it, he could remember it from 1860 on. Brought there as a child between the crinolines to stare at tight-trousereddandies in whiskers, riding with a cavalry seat; to watch the doffing of curly-brimmed and white top hats; the leisurely airof it all, and the little bow-legged man in a long red waistcoat who used to come among the fashion with dogs on severalstrings, and try to sell one to his mother: King Charles spaniels, Italian greyhounds, affectionate to her crinoline — younever saw them now. You saw no quality of any sort, indeed, just working people sitting in dull rows with nothing to stareat but a few young bouncing females in pot hats, riding astride, or desultory Colonials charging up and down ondismal-looking hacks; with, here and there, little girls on ponies, or old gentlemen jogging their livers, or an orderlytrying a great galumphing cavalry horse; no thoroughbreds, no grooms, no bowing, no scraping, no gossip — nothing; only thetrees the same — the trees indifferent to the generations and declensions of mankind. A democratic England — dishevelled,hurried, noisy, and seemingly without an apex. And that something fastidious in the soul of Soames turned over within him.Gone for ever, the close borough of rank and polish! Wealth there was — oh, yes! wealth — he himself was a richer man thanhis father had ever been; but manners, flavour, quality, all gone, engulfed in one vast, ugly, shoulder-rubbing,petrol-smelling Cheerio. Little half-beaten pockets of gentility and caste lurking here and there, dispersed and chetif, asAnnette would say; but nothing ever again firm and coherent to look up to. And into this new hurly-burly of bad manners andloose morals his daughter — flower of his life — was flung! And when those Labour chaps got power — if they ever did — theworst was yet to come!