Mury & Mary Peto, January 1th 1882 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS BY W. R. GREG LONDON: TRÜBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 1882. All rights reserved. SOME five or six years ago I ventured, under the allusive, but not inappropriate pseudonym of Cassandra, to call attention to a few of the dangers which appeared to me to threaten our social well-being in some very material points. My representations excited considerable notice, and produced several replies. The country, however, had then been revelling in a long period of almost unexampled prosperity, and was little inclined to listen to gloomy forebodings, or to criticisms of a disparaging character, or to take cognisance of the small clouds on the horizon, "scarcely bigger than a man's hand," which appeared to me ominous of coming storm and darkness. Indications of mischief, which could not be altogether denied, I was held to have exaggerated; I was generally regarded as a prophet of evil, constitutionally disposed to look at everything en noir; and on the whole my warnings met with little more belief or practical recognition than did those of my namesake in the days of Troy. Since the publication of my first note of caution a marked " change has come over the spirit of our dream;" the small cloud A |