the finely-shaped head, the little imperial under the lip, the glasses, the slightly lisping, insinuating voice”; with a following of “Webbites to caricature Webb” with excessive bureaucratic notions, and a belief that everything can be done without any one wishing to do it; the disciple “who dreams of the most foxy and wonderful digging by means of box-lids, table-spoons, dish-covers--anything but spades designed and made for the jobs in hand--just as he dreams of an extensive expropriation of landlords by a Legislature that includes the present unreformed House of Lords.”[7] In face of such realities as these--the few with their enthusiasm for a new gospel or with ingenious devices for effecting the millennium by back-door entrances, the many with their occasional gusts of interest, their normal lassitude and contempt for those who disprove God or attack Society--the observer is often discouraged in the work of reform. “Socialists,” says one of their most brilliant younger writers, “cannot look with full confidence upon the English electorate. It is hardly disputable that millions of electors in the greater cities have reached a point of personal decadence--physical, mental, and moral--to which no continental country furnishes a parallel on any comparable scale. Time is steadily multiplying these millions; and for English Socialism there is therefore a race against Time which it is very likely not to win.”[8] Mr. Ensor’s testimony is in part endorsed by the very remarkable evidence of various popular elections; that “Socialism” amongst the working peoples propagates and triumphs in times of plenty, withers up and vanishes in times of depression. This is exactly the reverse of the accepted belief, which thought that the poor are stung into Socialism by suffering, as poets are stung into poetry by wrong.