steepholm

I think nostalgia must be pretty universal. Thomas Browne notes the tendency to think that past times were better as one of the general foibles of the human mind in Pseudodoxia Epidemica, and there's plenty of evidence for it: look at the idea of historical decline embedded in such notions as the Golden Age, for example. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and suggest that the nineteenth century was relatively innovative in its Enlightenment-fuelled optimism about the future.

This seems like the kind of question that someone - probably everyone - should just know the answer to!