ABSTRACT
Ifa tale ofSocialism does not find abundance ofreaders it is not because the times are not ripe for it. This remarkable novel presents the great social problem in a striking garb. If the author's treatment is rather superficial and his philosophy unsatisfactory, we must put it down to the exigencies of modem fiction and the unsatisfying nature of his subject. In brooding passion, in philosophy, in literary power of contrasting the lot of the rich and the poor-not to speak of its want ofa moral-Demos does not aspire to vie with Alton Locke, but it tells a story more practical, and of more brightness and variety. Nor is the book wanting in eloquent passages and pathetic episodes which show it to be written by one who has a burning sympathy with the toiling poor. For pathos, take Emma Vine, the seamstress, sitting at the bedside of her dying sister Jane, comforting her with cheerful face while
her own heart is riven with woe at her lover's desertion, and trying to conceal the news which will cut short the sufferer's life; for eloquence, take the following, upon Jane's burial-place:
[Here the description of Manor Park Cemetery is quoted.] But Demos, though a tale of English Socialism, is not a Socialistic
novel. Perhaps it would pique curiosity more deeply if it were. Sometimes the author seems to preach the doctrines ofSaint-Simon,and sometimes to scoff at them. Not until the third volume do we learn the standpoint of the writer from the lips of the Rev. Mr Wyvern, whom without undue presumption we may take to represent him. Mr Wyvern, we are told, was once a badly paid curate, working in a wretched parish. The sight of the misery around him made him a Socialist. But now he has 'outgrown it.' His old zeal only lingers in the form oftolerance. He 'can enter into the mind ofa furious proletarian as easily as into the feeling which you (the aristocratic Hubert Eldon) represent. ' He is now content that the world should in substance remain as it is....
