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Merrie England has its attractions—if you can find them. There is nothing more salutary to the soul than an old, unspoiled village in the cool of a summer evening. But the number of such villages decreases yearly. The hunt, the landed aristocracy, the slumbering farms are changing, if not passing entirely from the scene.

But—and this is very important—the values of this England endure to a reassuring degree. Indeed, it might be argued that they have revived in the last ten years and that virtues thought dated in two post-war Brave New Worlds have been triumphantly reasserted. However, physically, Merrie England, the country Wordsworth tramped and Constable painted, is dead. The schoolteacher from Gibbsville or Gopher Prairie will find the remains nicely laid out.

Despite the blight of suburbia, the countryside retains a compelling charm for the visitor from the United States. There is that hour in a winter evening when a blue light gathers in the shadows of the wood, when the smoke rises straight from cottage chimneys, when you hear the sound of distant church bells. I remember walking once in 1944 with Al Paris, a young captain of the United States Air Force, through just such a scene. "It's funny," he said, "I walk this way two, three times a week, and I feel like I'm coming home. It's different from anything at home. Yet I feel I know it."