living after the likeness of God.

Not that I learnt the lesson then. When the first excitement of
horror and wonder were past, what I had seen made me for years the
veriest aristocrat, full of hatred and contempt of these dangerous
classes, whose existence I had for the first time discovered. It
required many years--years, too, of personal intercourse with the
poor--to explain to me the true meaning of what I saw here in
October twenty-seven years ago, and to learn a part of that lesson
which God taught to others thereby. And one part at least of that
lesson was this: That the social state of a city depends directly
on its moral state, and--I fear dissenting voices, but I must say
what I believe to be truth--that the moral state of a city
depends--how far I know not, but frightfully, to an extent as yet
uncalculated, and perhaps incalculable--on the physical state of
that city; on the food, water, air, and lodging of its
inhabitants.

But that lesson, and others connected with it, was learnt, and
learnt well, by hundreds. From the sad catastrophe I date the
rise of that interest in Social Science; that desire for some
nobler, more methodic, more permanent benevolence than that which
stops at mere almsgiving and charity-schools. The dangerous
classes began to be recognised as an awful fact which must be
faced; and faced, not by repression, but by improvement. The
"Perils of the Nation" began to occupy the attention not merely of
politicians, but of philosophers, physicians, priests; and the
admirable book which assumed that title did but re-echo the
feeling of thousands of earnest hearts.