ey forgot all
else, and became involved in a hideous struggle, each one for himself,
and against all others, to force a way to one of the small apertures of
the prison at which alone it was possible to get a breath of air. It
was a struggle in which men became beasts, and the recital of its
horrors by the few survivors so shocked our forefathers that for a
century later we find it a stock reference in their literature as a
typical illustration of the extreme possibilities of human misery, as
shocking in its moral as its physical aspect. They could scarcely have
anticipated that to us the Black Hole of Calcutta, with its press of
maddened men tearing and trampling one another in the struggle to win a
place at the breathing holes, would seem a striking type of the society
of their age. It lacked something of being a complete type, however,
for in the Calcutta Black Hole there were no tender women, no little
children and old men and women, no cripples. They were at least all
men, strong to bear, who suffered.

"When we reflect that the ancient order of which I have been speaking
was prevalent up to the end of the nineteenth century, while to us the
new order which succeeded it already seems antique, even our parents
having known no other, we cannot fail to be astounded at the suddenness
with which a transition so profound beyond all previous experience of
the race must have been effected. Some observation of the state of
men's minds during the last quarter of the nineteenth century will,
however, in great measure, dissipate this astonishment. Though general
intelligence in the modern sense could not be said to exist in any
community at that time, yet, as compared with previous generations, the
one then on the stage was intelligent. The inevitable consequence of
even this comparative degree of intelligence had been a perception of
the evils of society, such as had never before been general. It is
quite true that these evils had been even worse, much worse, in
previous ages. It was the increased intelligence of the masses which
made the difference, as the dawn reveals the squalor of surroundings
which in the darkness may have seemed tolerable. The key-note of the
literature of the period was one of compassion for the poor and
unfortunate, and indignant outcry against the failure of the social
machinery to ameliorate the miseries of men. It is plain from these
outbursts that the moral hideousness of the spectacle about them w