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HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

III.

too shall, in our turn, be outstripped, and in our turn beenvied. It may well be, in the twentieth century, that thepeasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miserably paid withfifteen shillings a week; that the carpenter at Greenwich mayreceive ten shillings a day; that labouring men may be as littleused to dine without meat as they noware to eat rye bread;that sanitary police and medical discoveries may have addedseveral more years to the average length of human life; thatnumerous comforts and luxuries which are now unknown, orconfined to a few, may be within the reach of every diligentand thrifty working man. And yet it may then be the modeto assert that the increase of wealth and the progress ofscience have benefited the few at the expense of the many,and to talk of the reign of Queen Victoria as the time whenEngland was truly merry England, when all classes werebound together by brotherly sympathy, when the rich didnot grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did notenvy the splendour of the rich.