The Great House by Stanley J. Weyman — Read

Mary Audley, crossing the moor to a week-day service, was but one of many who in the 'forties were venturing on new courses. In religion there were those who fancied that by a return to primitive forms they might recapture the primitive fervor; and those again who, like the curate whom Mary was going to hear, were bent on pursuing the beaten path into new places. Some thought that they had found a panacea for the evils of the day in education, and put their faith in workmen's institutes and night schools. Others were satisfied with philanthropy, and proclaimed that infants of seven ought not to toil for their living, that coal-pits were not fit places for women, and that what paid was not the only standard of life. A few dreamt of a new England in which gentle and simple were to mix on new-old terms; and a multitude, shrewd and hard-headed, believed in the Corn Law League, whose speakers travelled from Manchester to carry the claims of cheap bread to butter crosses and market towns, and there bearded the very landlord's agent.

The truth was that the country was lying sick with new evils, and had perforce to find a cure, whether that cure lay in faith, or in the primer, or in the Golden Rule, or in Adam Smith. For two generations men had been quitting the field for the mill, the farm for the coal-pit. They had followed their work into towns built haphazard, that grew presently into cities. There, short of light, of air, of water, lacking decency, lacking even votes-for the Reform Bill, that was to give everything to everybody, had stopped at the masters-lacking everything but wages, they swarmed in numbers stupendous and alarming to the mind of that day. And then the wages failed. Machines pushed out hands, though