Page:Fors Clavigera, Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain.djvu/16

8 blasphemy is current among all classes of England and America, as makes the superstition of all past ages divine truth in comparison.

One of these things is so—gay friends;—have it which way you will : one or other of these, to me, alike appalling ; and in your principal street of London society, you have a picture of highly dressed harlots gambling, of naked ones, called Andromeda and Francesca of Rimini, and of Christ led to be crucified, exhibited, for your better entertainment, in the same room; and at the end of the same street, an exhibition of jugglery, professedly imitating, for money, what a large number of you believe to be the efforts of the returned Dead to convince you of your Immortality. Meantime, at the other end—no, at the very centre of your great Babylon,—a son leaves his father dead, with his head, instead of a fire, in the fireplace, and goes out himself to his day's darg.

’We are very sorry;—What can we do? How can we help it? London is so big, and living is so very expensive, you know.’

Miserables,—who makes London big, but you, coming to look at the harlotries in it, painted and other? Who makes living expensive, but you, who drink, and eat, and dress, all you can; and never in your lives did one stroke of work to get your living,—never