And then to us, thus comfortably entrenched in self-esteem, there entered the figure, unknown to most, only half-known to any, of a new and most disturbing critic. Here was a man whose very name breathed Liberalism; for whom speculation had no fears; who had harassed the most hoary conventions with obstinate questionings; who had accepted Democracy as the evolution of natural law; who had poked delicious fun at the most highly-placed impostures, the most solemn plausibilities. In such a one we might surely have expected to find a friend, an ally, a comforter, a fellow-worker; a preacher of the smooth things which we loved to hear, an encourager of the day-dreams which we had learned from _Locksley Hall_. Instead of all this we found a critic--so gracious that we could not quarrel with him, so reasonable that we found it hard to dispute with him; so absolutely free from pomposity that we could not laugh at him, so genuinely and freshly witty that we could not help laughing with him--but a critic still. He thought scorn of our pleasant land, and gave no credence unto our word. He belittled our heroes; he pooh-poohed our achievements; he cast doubt on our prophecies; he caricatured our aspirations. He told us that we were the victims of a profound delusion. He warned us that the great Democracy on which we relied as our unchangeable foundation would give way under our feet. He pointed out that Labour had no more reason to expect its salvation from Liberalism than from Toryism. He insisted that all our political reform was mere machinery; that the end and object of politics was Social Reform; and that the promise of the future was for those who should help us to be better, wiser, and happier; for those who concerned themselves rather with the product of the machine than with the machine itself; who were not satisfied by eternally taking it to pieces and putting it together again, but who wanted to know what sort of stuff it was, when perfected, to turn out. He suggested that "the present troubled state of our social life" had at least something to do with "the thirty years' blind worship of their idols by our Liberal friends," and that it threw some doubt on "the sufficiency of their worship." "It is not," he said, "fatal to our Liberal friends to labour for Free Trade, Extension of the Suffrage, and Abolition of Church Rates, instead of graver social ends; but it is fatal to them to be told by their flatterers, and to believe, with our social condition what it is, that they have performed a great, a heroic work, by occupying themselves exclusively, for the last thirty years, with these Liberal nostrums."