"WE sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid.
"We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile."
~Hilaire Belloc: The Barbarians
Complete essay here
