[basil ransome-davies]

A pox on it! My very fibres tremble To wake in Hell, yet like no Hell that was ever writ, can undo a man, be he ever so steeped in villainy. What lifetime's endeavour of roguery and vice could deserve this monstrous show – a fantastical new planet peopled by whores, madmen and sticky-fingered dissemblers, yet withal a giddy merry-go-round of mechanical marvels? The gods in its pantheon are mummers and minstrels, some scarce past childhood, whom a hireling pack of scribblers and acolytes attends upon like slavish, bowing courtiers and whose fornications light up the public prints, while amid the carnival death strides in ironclad battalions, a diabolical energy. Marry, such change might unhinge the brain and send the wits scattering.
And yet 'tis not so changed, after all. What my dazed eyes show me is lechery, lechery, still wars and lechery. Nothing else holds fashion.