V " DARKEST ENGLAND " SCHEME 249 



read in three months. Has socialism no litera- 

 ture ? And what is socialism but an incarnation 

 of the social question? Moreover, I am per- 

 suaded that even " Mudie's " resources could have 

 furnished Mr. Booth with the " Life of Lord 

 Shaftesbury " and Carlyle's works. Mr. Booth 

 seems to have undertaken to instruct the world 

 without having heard of " Past and Present " or of 

 " Latter-Day Pamphlets " ; though, somewhat late 

 in the day, a judicious friend calls his attention 

 to them. To those of my contemporaries on whom, 

 as on myself, Carlyle's writings on this topic made 

 an ineffaceable impression forty years ago, who 

 know that, for all that time, hundreds of able 

 and devoted men, both clerical and lay, have 

 worked heart and soul for the permanent amend- 

 ment of the condition of the poor, Mr. Booth's 

 "Go to Mudie's" affords an apt measure of the depth 

 of his preliminary studies. However, I am bound 

 to admit that these earlier labourers in the field 

 laboured in such a different fashion, that the origin- 

 ality of the plan started by Mr. Booth remains 

 largely unaffected. For them no drums have beat, 

 no trombones brayed; no sanctified buffoonery, after 

 the model of the oration of the Friar in Wallen- 

 stein's camp dear to the readers of Schiller, has 

 tickled the ears of the groundlings on their behalf. 

 Sadly behind the great age of rowdy self-adver- 

 tisement in which their lot has fallen, they seem 

 not to have advanced one whit beyond John the 



