Jordan's tolling in 1901; of the next generation, whose span covered the ...

Jordan's tolling in 1901; of the next generation, whose span covered the last stage-coach and the first aeroplane, who had sat waiting for news from Lucknow and Sebastopol, and lived to listen for the guns defending London; when I consider their assured morality, their confident acceptance of the social order, their ready undertaking of its obligations; I have a sense of solidity, tenacity, and uniformity, which all the time I know to be in large part an illusion of distance, and I shall have failed of my purpose if I have not made it clear that the very word 'Victorian' may be used to mask a fallacy and a misconception.

I was born when the Queen had still nearly nineteen years to reign ; I saw her twice, Gladstone once; I well remember the death of Newman and Tennyson, and my earliest recollection of the Abbey brings back the flowers fresh on Browning's grave. But if I place myself in zoo, and then look forward for thirty-six years, and backward for as many, I feel doubtful whether the changes made in the earlier time were not greater than anything I have seen since.

I am speaking of changes in men's minds, and I cannot in my own time observe anything of greater consequence than the dethronement of ancient faith by natural science and historical criticism, and the transition from oligarchic to democratic representation.