Page:Our Common Land (and other short essays).djvu/184

 is nothing sensationally terrible in the wickedness or destitution of a place, when it is covered with little houses of laundresses or small shopkeepers, are we who have advantages of education or refinement not needed there? Have we no bright flowers to take to the people, no books to lend, no sweet sympathy and young brightness to carry among them? Ought we not to be accumulating those memories which will give us a place near them as real friends if the time of loss and trial comes?

I would urge you all who are inhabitants of a large parish, markedly divided into poor and rich districts, as citizens of a city fearfully so divided, to weigh well your duties; and, never forgetting the near ones to home and neighbourhood, to remember also that when Europe is sacrificed to England, England to your own town, your own town to your parish, your parish to your family, the step is easy to sacrifice your family to