T "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 persuaded 

 that even " Mudie's " resources could have fur- 

 nished Mr. Booth with the " Life of Lord Shaftes- 

 bury " and Carlyle's works. Mr. Booth seems to 

 have undertaken to instruct the world without 

 having heard of " Past and Present " or of ^' Lat- 

 ter-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 

 originality of the plan started by Mr. Booth re- 

 mains largely unaffected. For them no drums 

 have beat, no trombones brayed; no sanctified 

 buffoonery, after the model of the oration of the 

 Friar in Wallenstein's camp dear to the readers of 

 Schiller, has tickled the ears of the groundUngs 

 on their behalf. Sadly behind the great age of 

 rowdy self-advertisement in which their lot has 

 fallen, they seem not to have advanced one whit 



