The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 60: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER VI THE AVOWAL OF LOVE WeE must now again transport the reader’s attention back to the English capital, the huge Babylon where mil- lions of interests are ever jarring, where, notwithstanding a much-vaunted freedom, might is ever trampling upon right, and, with all its boasted civilization, society exhibits the barbarism of the industrious many being beggared to maintain the favoured few in luxurious indolence. Yes, this is the city where the most tremendous anomalies, the most striking contrasts, and the most amazing incon- sistencies cannot fail to arrest the gaze and rivet the atten- tion. ‘There worthlessness and immorality are seen in palaces, in mansions, at luxurious banquets, and in gilded equipages, while integrity and virtue are crushed unto the earth, trampled into the dust, forced into contact with crime, doomed to have their very nature changed, and then plunged into the workhouse or the gaol. There, in that modern Babylon, is the false god set up which three thou- sand years ago the king of ancient Babylon ventured to erect in the plain of Dura, — that golden image which doubtless represented Mammon then and bears the name of Mammon now, and which all kneel down and worship of their own accord and without any bidding. Here, too, in this grand and mighty London of ours, which Britons proclaim to be not merely the metropolis of their own land, but of the entire world, here, in this city, where art the most exquisite, science the most refined, discovery the most strange, and ingenuity the most persevering are ever multiplying their marvels, and heaping up wonder upon wonder, here is society cursed with the foulest moral leprosy that ever tyrannical institutions, infamous laws, and execrable social 43 CORNICLIOO! ‘S (CO)