During the Victorian era every Englishman had his coat off and was working for all he was worth, perspiration on his brow, grime on his body, the clangour of machinery in his ear. Carlyle found his generation working, and gave it his blessing in effective phrase, and was so obsessed by his own message that he gave up his own quest, his own seeking, and lived in the British Museum, pondering, grubbing, scratching, and turning forth volume after volume of dull Frederick, and he forgot his own soul and the man who wrote _Sartor Resartus_ and _The Heroes_. And although this work, work for work’s sake, is not a Christian thing, it is associated in the mind with what I call the “way of Martha.” It is an exaggeration of her sweet serviceableness, a supposition that she had gone crazy and had not only become cumbered about with many things, but was so cumbered that she could never in all her life spare a moment to come to the Master. Be that as it may, England had a fairly clear and simple notion of her creed. Work pleased her. Popular opinion was on the side, not of the parson who did nought, but of the old farmer “who stubbed Thornaby Waaste.” Tennyson sang work and the goal of work—“All diseases cured by science,” “the Parliament of the World,” “the rule of the meek upon earth.” We gave our shoulders and our hearts and our lips to the work, though indeed not much of the last, for in those days silence was golden. Now silence is golden only for those who do not know what to say. A change has come about, is coming about. Work has ceased to be holy. “To labour is to pray.” “Do the duty which lies nearest to you, that which is doablest.” “Do noble things, not dream them, all day long ...” such was the message of Victorian literature. And yet in that literature there was a note of discord, and that was the voice of Browning, the first of the moderns, and he wrote: Not on the vulgar mass Called “work,” must sentence pass. And again: Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. And again: He fixed thee midst this dance Of plastic circumstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest: Machinery just meant To give thy soul its bent, Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. The way of Martha had given place to the way of Mary. My elders read _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ to comfort one another: Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made;