And Young makes his high-born dame inquire,
"Shall pleasures of a short duration chain
A _lady's_ soul in everlasting pain?"
In broad contrast to this, all the modern popular movements in England
are based upon the recognition of the equal value of every human soul.
The Times, the most aristocratic paper in England, publishes letters
from needlewomen and dressmakers' apprentices, and reads grave
lectures to duchesses and countesses on their duties to their poor
sisters. One may fancy what a stir this would have made in the courtly
circles of the reign of George II. Fashionable literature now arrays
itself on the side of the working classes. The current of novel
writing is reversed. Instead of milliners and chambermaids being
bewitched with the adventures of countesses and dukes, we now have
fine lords and ladies hanging enchanted over the history of John the
Carrier, with his little Dot, dropping sympathetic tears into little
Charlie's wash tub, and pursuing the fortunes of a dressmaker's
apprentice, in company with poor Smike, and honest John Brodie and his
little Yorkshire wife. Punch laughs at every body but the work people;
and if, occasionally, he laughs at them, it is rather in a kindly way
than with any air of contempt.
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