If Mr.Mallock, on his way to the publishers, should have his skirts pinned to a wall by a javelin, it would not occur to him--at least for several hours--to ask if life were worth living; and if such peril were a daily matter, he would ask it never more; he would have other things to think about, he would be living indeed--not lying in a box with cotton, safe, but immeasurably dull.

The aleatory, whether it touch life, or fortune, or renown--whether we explore Africa or only toss for halfpence--that is what I conceive men to love best, and that is what we are seeking to exclude from men's existences.

Of all forms of the aleatory, that which most commonly attends our working men--the danger of misery from want of work--is the least inspiriting: it does not whip the blood, it does not evoke the glory of contest; it is tragic, but it is passive; and yet, in so far as it is aleatory, and a peril sensibly touching them, it does truly season the men's lives.

Of those who fail, I do not speak--despair should be sacred; but to those who even modestly succeed, the changes of their life bring interest: a job found, a shilling saved, a dainty earned, all these are wells of pleasure springing afresh for the successful poor; and it is not from these but from the villa-dweller that we hear complaints of the unworthiness of life.

Much, then, as the average of the proletariat would gain in this new state of life, they would also lose a certain something, which would not be missed in the beginning, but would be missed progressively and progressively lamented.