Past and Present / Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII.

A collection of essays and discursive history contrasts a disciplined medieval monastic community with industrial-age England to diagnose social illness and propose remedies. Part historical narrative recounts the abbey's governance and communal devotion as a model of responsibility and moral leadership; extended polemical chapters indict contemporary Mammonism, dilettantism, political economy, and dysfunctional aristocracy for producing poverty amid material plenty. The final sections explore institutional and ethical reforms, urging a meritocratic leadership of talent, renewed public duty, and more stable, humane relations between labor, property, and authority as cures for spiritual and social decline.