poor class, for the lower middle-class vanishes
more completely with every passing day. Thus the class formerly most
stable has become the most restless one. It consists to-day of a few
remnants of a past time, and a number of people eager to make fortunes,
industrial Micawbers and speculators of whom one may amass a fortune,
while ninety-nine become insolvent, and more than half of the ninety-nine
live by perpetually repeated failure.

But in these towns the proletarians are the infinite majority, and how
they fare, what influence the great town exercises upon them, we have now
to investigate.

THE GREAT TOWNS.

A town, such as London, where a man may wander for hours together without
reaching the beginning of the end, without meeting the slightest hint
which could lead to the inference that there is open country within
reach, is a strange thing. This colossal centralisation, this heaping
together of two and a half millions of human beings at one point, has
multiplied the power of this two and a half millions a hundredfold; has
raised London to the commercial capital of the world, created the giant
docks and assembled the thousand vessels that continually cover the
Thames. I know nothing more imposing than the view which the Thames
offers during the ascent from the sea to London Bridge. The masses of
buildings, the wharves on both sides, especially from Woolwich upwards,
the countless ships along both shores, crowding ever closer and closer
together, until, at last, only a narrow passage remains in the middle of
the river, a passage through which hundreds of steamers shoot by one
another; all this is so vast, so impressive, that a man cannot collect
himself, but is lost in the marvel of England's greatness before he sets
foot upon English soil. {23}

But the sacrifices which all this has cost become apparent later. After
roaming the streets of the capital a day or two, making headway with
difficulty through the human turmoil and the endless lines of vehicles,
after visiting the slums of the metropolis, one realises for the first
time that these Londoners have been forced to sacrifice the best
qualities of their human nature, to bring to pass all the marvels of
civilisation which crowd their city; that a hundred powers which
slumbered within them have remained inactive, have been suppressed in
order that a few might be developed more fully and multiply through union
with those of others. The very tur