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 For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook, Or groom!—We must run glittering like a brook In the open sunshine, or we are unblest; The wealthiest man among us is the best; No grandeur now in nature or in book Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more: The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence, And pure religion breathing household laws.

The Preface to "Les Miserables"

(The poet and humanitarian of France, 1802-1885, has in this passage set forth the purpose of one of the half-dozen greatest novels of the world)

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.