n and land, not yet emerged. A human Mother and
Father had said to themselves, What shall we do to escape starvation?
We are deep sunk here, in our dark cellar; and help is far.--Yes, in
the Ugolino Hungertower stern things happen; best-loved little Gaddo
fallen dead on his Father's knees!--The Stockport Mother and Father
think and hint: Our poor little starveling Tom, who cries all day for
victuals, who will see only evil and not good in this world: if he
were out of misery at once; he well dead, and the rest of us perhaps
kept alive? It is thought, and hinted; at last it is done. And now Tom
being killed, and all spent and eaten, Is it poor little starveling
Jack that must go, or poor little starveling Will?--What a committee
of ways and means!

In starved sieged cities, in the uttermost doomed ruin of old
Jerusalem fallen under the wrath of God, it was prophesied and said,
'The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children.' The
stern Hebrew imagination could conceive no blacker gulf of
wretchedness; that was the ultimatum of degraded god-punished man. And
we here, in modern England, exuberant with supply of all kinds,
besieged by nothing if it be not by invisible Enchantments, are we
reaching that?--How come these things? Wherefore are they, wherefore
should they be?

* * * * *

Nor are they of the St. Ives workhouses, of the Glasgow lanes, and
Stockport cellars, the only unblessed among us. This successful
industry of England, with its plethoric wealth, has as yet made nobody
rich; it is an enchanted wealth, and belongs yet to nobody. We might
ask, Which of us has it enriched? We can spend thousands where we once
spent hundreds; but can purchase nothing good with them. In Poor and
Rich, instead of noble thrift and plenty, there is idle luxury
alternating with mean scarcity and inability. We have sumptuous
garnitures for our Life, but have forgotten to _live_ in the middle of
them. It is an enchanted wealth; no man of us can yet touch it. The
class of men who feel that they are truly better off by means of it,
let them give us their name!

Many men eat finer cookery, drink dearer liquors,--with what
advantage they can report, and their Doctors can: but in the heart of
them, if we go out of the dyspeptic stomach, what increase of
blessedness is there? Are they better, beautifuler, stronger, braver?
Are they even what they call 'happier'? Do they look with satisfaction