kets were gratefully accepted; and,
when we asked the giver if she was going to the Ball, she replied, with
excellent sense and taste, "Oh, no. My sister, in her position, is
obliged to give these grand parties, but I should be quite out of place
there. You must tell me all about it next time you come to the
Workhouse."

Meanwhile, during this "day of small things" a quiet but momentous
revolution had been going on all round us, in the spheres of thought and
conscience; and the earlier idea of individual service had been, not
swamped by, but expanded into, the nobler conception of corporate
endeavour.

It had been a work of time. The Christian Socialism of 1848--one of the
finest episodes in our moral history--had been trampled underfoot by the
wickedness of the Crimean War. To all appearance, it fell into the
ground and died. After two years of aimless bloodshed, peace was
restored in 1856, and a spell of national prosperity succeeded. The
Repeal of the Corn Laws had done its work; food was cheaper; times were
better; the revenue advanced "by leaps and bounds." But commercialism
was rampant. It was the heyday of the Ten Pound Householder and the
Middle Class Franchise. Mr. Podsnap and Mr. Gradgrind enounced the
social law. Bright and Cobden dominated political thinking. The
Universities were fast bound in the misery and iron of Mill and Bain.
Everywhere the same grim idols were worshipped--unrestricted
competition, the survival of the fittest, and universal selfishness
enthroned in the place which belonged to universal love. "The Devil take
the hindermost" was the motto of industrial life. "In the huge and
hideous cities, the awful problem of Industry lay like a bad dream; but
Political Economy warned us off that ground. We were assured that the
free play of competitive forces was bound to discover the true
equipoise. No intervention could really affect the inevitable outcome.
It could only hinder and disturb."[57] The Church, whose pride it had
been in remoter ages to be the Handmaid of the Poor, was bidden to leave
the Social Problem severely alone; and so ten years rolled by, while the
social pressure on labour became daily more grievous to be borne. But
meanwhile the change was proceeding underground, or at least out of
sight. Forces were working side by side which knew nothing of each
other, but which were all tending to the same result. The Church, boldly
casting aside the trammels which had bound her to weal