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"This behavior of corn-law agitators and protectors of poachers was an hypocrisy too horrible for comment. Everard sipped claret."

The novels which depict the really acute phases of labor and poverty,—Sybil, Mary Barton, North and South, Shirley, Alton Locke, Hard Times, (diagnosed by Macaulay as "sullen socialism"), Put Yourself in his Place, ''Felix Holt'',—are apt to have John Barton's kind of laugh, if any, "a low chuckle, that had no mirth in it." But the author of the first of these puts into another story a pungent little description:

"The Elysians consisted of a few thousand beautified mortals, the only occupation of whose existence was enjoyment; the rest of the population comprised some millions of Gnomes and Sylphs, who did nothing but work, and ensured by their labour the felicity of the superior class."

It is inevitable that the artist and the humorist should find their most congenial fields in those relationships that are vital, and not too hampered by the technique of more formal and crystallized institutions. Prisons, Asylums, Courts, and the whole legal machinery, offer a less inviting prospect than do political parties and theories, and the contrast between social strata.

Yet the first third of our list,—Peacock, Lytton, Disraeli, and Dickens,—with the addition of Reade, Trollope, and Butler, did not shrink from contact with red tape. Dickens and Reade have the monopoly of the department of Charities and Corrections, though Lytton asserted the purpose of Paul Clifford to be an indictment against so-*