A Glimpse of My Country

Whatever is it that we are all looking for? I fancy that it is
really quite close. When I was a boy I had a fancy that Heaven
or Fairyland or whatever I called it, was immediately behind my
own back, and that this was why I could never manage to see it,
however often I twisted and turned to take it by surprise.
I had a notion of a man perpetually spinning round on one foot
like a teetotum in the effort to find that world behind his back
which continually fled from him. Perhaps this is why the world
goes round. Perhaps the world is always trying to look over
its shoulder and catch up the world which always escapes it,
yet without which it cannot be itself.

In any case, as I have said, I think that we must always conceive
of that which is the goal of all our endeavours as something which is
in some strange way near. Science boasts of the distance of its stars;
of the terrific remoteness of the things of which it has to speak.
But poetry and religion always insist upon the proximity, the almost
menacing closeness of the things with which they are concerned.
Always the Kingdom of Heaven is "At Hand"; and Looking-glass Land is
only through the looking-glass. So I for one should never be astonished
if the next twist of a street led me to the heart of that maze in
which all the mystics are lost. I should not be at all surprised if I
turned one corner in Fleet Street and saw a yet queerer-looking lamp;
I should not be surprised if I turned a third corner and found
myself in Elfland.

I should not be surprised at this; but I was surprised the other day
at something more surprising. I took a turn out of Fleet Street
and found myself in England.

. . . . .

The singular shock experienced perhaps requires explanation.
In the darkest or the most inadequate moments of England there
is one thing that should always be remembered about the very
nature of our country. It may be shortly stated by saying that
England is not such a fool as it looks. The types of England,
the externals of England, always misrepresent the country.
England is an oligarchical country, and it prefers that its
oligarchy should be inferior to itself.

The speaking in the House of Commons, for instance, is not only worse
than the speaking was, it is worse than the speaking is, in all or
almost all other places in small debating clubs or casual dinners.
Our countrymen probably prefer this solemn futility in the higher
places of the national life. It may be a strange sight to see
the blind leading the blind; but England provides a stranger.
England shows us the blind leading the people who can see.
And this again is an under-statement of the case. For the English
political aristocrats not only speak