ation, that there was order, but that civilisation only showed
its morbidity, and order only its monotony. No one would say, in going
through a criminal slum, "I see no statues. I notice no cathedrals." But
here there were public buildings; only they were mostly lunatic asylums.
Here there were statues; only they were mostly statues of railway
engineers and philanthropists--two dingy classes of men united by their
common contempt for the people. Here there were churches; only they were
the churches of dim and erratic sects, Agapemonites or Irvingites. Here,
above all, there were broad roads and vast crossings and tramway lines
and hospitals and all the real marks of civilization. But though one
never knew, in one sense, what one would see next, there was one thing
we knew we should not see--anything really great, central, of the
first class, anything that humanity had adored. And with revulsion
indescribable our emotions returned, I think, to those really close and
crooked entries, to those really mean streets, to those genuine slums
which lie round the Thames and the City, in which nevertheless a real
possibility remains that at any chance corner the great cross of the
great cathedral of Wren may strike down the street like a thunderbolt.

"But you must always remember also," said Grant to me, in his heavy
abstracted way, when I had urged this view, "that the very vileness of
the life of these ordered plebeian places bears witness to the victory
of the human soul. I agree with you. I agree that they have to live
in something worse than barbarism. They have to live in a fourth-rate
civilization. But yet I am practically certain that the majority of
people here are good people. And being good is an adventure far more
violent and daring than sailing round the world. Besides--"

"Go on," I said.

No answer came.

"Go on," I said, looking up.

The big blue eyes of Basil Grant were standing out of his head and he
was paying no attention to me. He was staring over the side of the tram.

"What is the matter?" I asked, peering over also.

"It is very odd," said Grant at last, grimly, "that I should have been
caught out like this at the very moment of my optimism. I said all these
people were good, and there is the wickedest man in England."

"Where?" I asked, leaning over further, "where?"

"Oh, I was right enough," he went on, in that strange continuous and
sleepy tone which always angered his hearers at acute moments