SOURCE: "Carlyle's Past and Present: A Prophecy," in The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. XXI, No. 1, January, 1922, pp. 30-40.

In the following essay, Williams analyzes Carlyle's Past and Present, arguing that it provides "'a piercing glance into the feudal age, " an "acute critique upon contemporary England," and a glimpse into the future in which Carlyle foresees the rise of the Labor Party.

One day when Mr. Arthur Henderson was stating in no uncertain terms what would be acceptable to the British Labor Party, a member of the audience was moved to quote to his neighbor a sentence from Carlyle's Past and Present: "Some 'Chivalry of Labour,' some noble humanity and practical divineness of labor, will yet be realized on this earth." Recent strikes, then, had made the Labor Party "chivalrous," if not "divine;" the speaker's tone was that of complacence, of realized prophecy. "Chivalrous" and "divine" are not...