Certainly, if we look at the matter, we have not much to say for ourselves, unless it be in that dawning of good intentions which I have alluded to before. There is to be found in our metropolis, in our great towns, and even in our rural districts, an extent of squalid misery such as we are almost afraid to give heed to, and which we are glad to forget as soon as we have read or heard of it. It may be that our ancestors endured, it may be that many savage tribes still endure, far more privation than is to be found in the sufferings of our lowest class. But the mind refuses to consider the two states as analogous, and insists upon thinking that the state of physical and moral degradation often found amongst our working classes, with the arabesque of splendour and luxury which surrounds it, is a more shocking thing to contemplate than a pressing scarcity of provisions endured by a wandering horde of savage men sunk in equal barbarism. When we follow men home, who have been cooperating with other civilized men in continuous labour throughout the livelong day, we should not, without experience, expect to find their homes dreary, comfortless, deformed with filth, such homes as poverty alone could not make. Still less, when we gaze upon some pleasant looking village, fair enough in outward seeming for poets’ songs to celebrate, should we expect to find scarcity of fuel, scantiness of food, prevalence of fever, the healthy huddled together with the sick, decency outraged, and self-respect all gone. And yet such sights, both in town and country, if not of habitual occurrence, are at any rate sadly too numerous for us to pass them by as rare and exceptional cases. Is this then the inevitable nature of things? Has the boasted civilization of the world led only to this? Do we master the powers of nature only to let forth a new and fierce torrent of social miseries upon us? Let not such thoughts be ours. Pagans, the slaves of destiny, might well have held them. But we cannot doubt that the conditions of labour, under which man holds the earth, express the mercy and the goodness, no less than the judgment, of God. * * * * *