and garden, a tenement in a cliff of workmen’s dwellings, a “child’s white face to kiss at night,” a “woman’s smile by candle light.” In each individual is resistance, courage, aspiration; a persistence which carries through the daily task with some energy and some enjoyment, and not entire discredit at the end. But immediately the mass of separate persons has become welded into the aggregate, this note of distinction vanishes. Humanity has become the Mob, pitifully ineffective before the organised resistance of police and military, and almost indecently naked of discipline or volition in the comparison; gaping open-mouthed, jeering at devotions which it cannot understand, like some uncouth monster which can be cajoled and flattered into imprisonment or ignoble action; like the Crowd which in all ages has rejoiced, one day at the crowning, the next at the crucifixion, of its King. Why is it that this writing down of values takes place when mankind is thus collected into aggregations: that the spirit of the mob is so much less reputable than the spirit of its separate components? In part, perhaps, because the trivial and vacant elements are uppermost amongst a city race whose aspirations and purposes are independent of organised collective energies and aims. They have gathered for recreation, to be amused; for curiosity, to be surprised; for companionship, in a region where night has its empire, not without its terrors, just beyond the boundaries of their limited experience. The tragedy of common life is apparent, a modern philosopher has declared, not where poverty is the heritage of all but the few, or because existence offers at best a struggle uncertain and austere; but whenever that life is closed within limited horizons, and moved by no ideal springs. The visionary who cherishes the hope of a renovated society in which all shall be satisfied, the woman who flings herself into prison in the expectation that through her sacrifice the freedom of women will be attained, is a figure to the outward eye, indistinguishable in its obscurity from the multitude around who jeer and wonder and applaud. But these visionaries and enthusiasts possess a secret denied to their fellows, which gives their little lives a significance absent from the encompassing multitude; in the sense of consecration to a purpose, a meaning, and a goal.