he found unbearable. His criticism of the "mechanical society" produced a memorable narrative in Charles Dickens's novel Hard Times, whose subtitle For These Times is indebted to Carlyle's essay. Chartism Carlyle raised the condition-of-England question in Chartism, in which he expressed his sympathy for the poor and the industrial class in England and argued the need for a more profound reform. He noticed a discrepancy between a new form of economic activity called “industrialism”, which promised general welfare, and a dramatic degradation in the living conditions of the urban poor. Carlyle, who had studied extensively the causes of the French Revolution, was apprehensive about England’s future. He presented Chartism as a symptom of a disease that affected England. The effect of it could be a revolution if government did not improve the living conditions of the labouring classes. A cure for this disease is, according to Carlyle, a "real aristocracy" which can lead the working class through the vicissitudes of modern history. Carlyle looked for a new type of “unclassed” aristocracy because he was critical about both an idle landowning aristocracy and a working aristocracy submerged in Mammonism, who instead of being "captains of industry", are "a gang of industrial buccaneers and pirates." Past and Present Past and Present (1843) was written as a response to the economic crisis which began in the early 1840s. This book, like its predecessor Chartism and Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), presents a further analysis of the condition-of-England question. Carlyle contrasted the medieval past and the turbulent Victorian present of the 1830s and 1840s. For him, the latter was a time of uncontrolled industrialisation, worship of money, exploitation of the weak, low wages, poverty, unemployment and riots, which would bring England to self-destruction. Carlyle expresses his critical opinion about the Condition of England in an elevated, prophetic language. Despite England’s abundant resources, the poor classes are living in deprivation. He shows a depressing picture of the daily life of the workers, many of whom are unable to find meaningful work. Carlyle’s solution was the same as that proposed in Sartor Resartus (1832)—a spiritual rebirth of both the individual and society. The two sections of the book show the contrasting visions of the past and the present. His idealised vision of the past is based on the chronicle of the English monk Jocelyn de Brakelond (died 1211), who described the life of the abbot Samson of Tottington