one or other of the lot? To read our story-tellers from Mr. Kipling
downward, one might suppose the East End to be inhabited by bastards
engaged in mutual murder, and the marvel is that anyone is left alive to
be the subject of a tale. You may not bring an indictment against a
whole nation, but no sensational writer hesitates to libel three million
of our fellow-citizens. Put it in Whitechapel, and you may tell what
filthy lie you please.

About once in a generation some "Bitter Cry" pierces through custom, and
the lives of "the poor" become a subject for polite conversation and
amateur solicitude. For three months, or even for six, that subject
appears as the intellectual "_rôti_" at dinner-tables; then it is found
a little heavy, and cultured interest returns to its natural courses of
plays, pictures, politics, a dancing woman, and the memorials of Kings.
It is almost time now that the poor came up again, for a quarter of a
century has gone since they were last in fashion, and men's collars and
women's skirts have run their full orbit since. Excellent books have
appeared, written with intimate knowledge of working life--books such as
Charles Booth's _London_ or Mr. Richard Free's _Seven Years Hard_, to
mention only two; but either the public mind was preoccupied with other
amusements, or it had not recovered from the lassitude of the last
philanthropic debauch. Nothing has roused that fury of charitable
curiosity which accompanies a true social revival, and leaves its
victims gasping for the next excitement. The time was, perhaps, ripe,
but no startling success awaited Mr. Alexander Paterson's book, _Across
the Bridges_. Excellent though it was, its excellence excluded it from
fashion. For it was written with the restraint of knowledge, and
contained no touch of melodrama from beginning to end. Not by knowledge
or restraint are the insensate sensations of fashion reached.