Life was never a May-game for men: in all times the lot of the dumb millions born to toil was defaced with manifold sufferings, injustices, heavy burdens, avoidable and unavoidable; not play at all, but hard work that made the sinews sore and the heart sore. As bond-slaves, _villani_, _bordarii_, _sochemanni_, nay indeed as dukes, earls and kings, men were oftentimes made weary of their life; and had to say, in the sweat of their brow and of their soul, Behold, it is not sport, it is grim earnest, and our back can bear no more! Who knows not what massacrings and harryings there have been; grinding, long-continuing, unbearable injustices,--till the heart had to rise in madness, and some "_Eu Sachsen, nimith euer sachses_, You Saxons, out with your gully-knives, then!" You Saxons, some 'arrestment,' partial 'arrestment of the Knaves and Dastards' has become indispensable!--The page of Dryasdust is heavy with such details. And yet I will venture to believe that in no time, since the beginnings of Society, was the lot of those same dumb millions of toilers so entirely unbearable as it is even in the days now passing over us. It is not to die, or even to die of hunger, that makes a man wretched; many men have died; all men must die,--the last exit of us all is in a Fire-Chariot of Pain. But it is to live miserable we know not why: to work sore and yet gain nothing; to be heart-worn, weary, yet isolated, unrelated, girt-in with a cold-universal Laissez-faire: it is to die slowly all our life long, imprisoned in a deaf, dead, Infinite Injustice, as in the accursed iron belly of a Phalaris' Bull! This is and remains forever intolerable to all men whom God has made. Do we wonder at French Revolutions, Chartisms, Revolts of Three Days? The times, if we will consider them, are really unexampled. Never before did I hear of an Irish Widow reduced to 'prove her sisterhood by dying of typhus-fever and infecting seventeen persons,'--saying in such undeniable way, "You _see_ I was your sister!" Sisterhood, brotherhood, was often forgotten; but not till the rise of these ultimate Mammon and Shotbelt Gospels did I ever see it so expressly denied. If no pious Lord or _Law-ward_ would remember it, always some pious Lady ('_Hlaf-dig_,' Benefactress, '_Loaf-giveress_,' they say she is,--blessings on her beautiful heart!) was there, with mild mother-voice and hand, to remember it; some pious thoughtful _Elder_, what we now call 'Prester,' _Presbyter_ or 'Priest,' was there to put all men in mind of it, in the name of the God who had made all.