From The Times, 23 January 1901: But she would have seen, too, ...

From The Times, 23 January 1901: But she would have seen, too, over the whole range of criticism and intelligence, women becoming an effective element in the articulation of the social mind.

She would have seen the weight of accomplishments and attractiveness lifting, and the number of things a woman can do or think,

without discredit or censure, increasing

yearly. She would have seen another burden lifting too.' About 1875 the birth-rate in

the provident and educated

classes begins to fall.

The Respectable Family is shrinking: and it is, though very faintly yet, beginning to lose its old patriarchal cohesion. It is a strange world we look out on

when we stand on the slope of

the Victorian age and watch the great lights setting a world which

would have startled and dismayed many

of those who had helped to make it.

But two of them could have faced it with a high confidence. One is Bentham.

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