“I never could find out. It was all about British political life; people were pulling and hauling and intriguing, but I never could understand what their principles were, or what they expected to do when they got elected.” “That’s the point exactly; there are no principles, there are only parties. Whichever one gets in constitutes the ‘government,’ and its task is to hold labor by the throat while capital picks its pockets. Labor produces a sovereign a day, and capital takes it, and gives labor four shillings wages, and labor tips its cap and is grateful. And then capital’s favorite lady-novelist comes round with a market basket containing sixpence worth of food and medicine; which is called charity, and is the means of getting labor’s vote at election time.” Such was the private life of Mrs. Humphry Ward. She was what is called “philanthropic”; that is, she was prominent in those society activities which help the poor by playing upon the vanity and love of display of the rich. Her life consisted in rushing about from one meeting to another, shaking hands and chatting, rushing home to dress and dine with prominent people, and then reading about it in the next day’s newspapers. She was so busy with all this that she could only find half an hour a day in which to read Greek! The characters in her books are busy with the same kind of activities. The leading man is a handsome young aristocrat, whose occupation is becoming premier. We never have any idea why he wants to be premier, except that as hero that is his function. The idea that the people of England should ask reasons for making an empty-headed noodle into their premier is one that never occurs to anyone in the novels. What interests us is the efforts of the young man’s friends to push him in, and the efforts of his enemies to bar him out.