TheVictorians

"We had always been convinced that Victorianism was a myth, engendered by the long life of the sovereign and of her most illustrious subjects. We were constantly being told that the Victorians did this, or the Victorians thought that, while my own difficulty was to find anything on which they agreed: any assumption which was not at some time or other fiercely challenged. 'Victorian History'.


Ritchie left the School Boards and the Guardians to be absorbed later. ...

Ritchie left the School Boards and the Guardians to be absorbed later. When the transfer of power was complete, the entire range of ordinary life, from birth, or even before birth, to burial, had been brought within the ambit of public interest and observation.

In the middle, like a Tudor gateway worked into a modern building, remains the joint control of the Justices and the County Council over the constabulary. Otherwise, the whole system, now so comprehensive and searching, is nothing but the logical evolution of the Benthamite formula-local representation controlled by central experience, public zeal guided by professional knowledge.

The other vital article of the common Victorian faith is less easy to analyse.

The Family may be regarded as of Divine institution, as a Divine appointment for the comfort and education of mankind. Or it may be thought of as a mode of social organization, based on certain primary facts, the natural attraction of the sexes and the long infancy of the human creature, and affording on the whole, with all its defects, the most satisfactory provision for that education and comfort.

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A very cursory observation of human affairs is, indeed, enough to show ...

A very cursory observation of human affairs is, indeed, enough to show that the attraction may be as transient as it is powerful; that relations within the family may be bo

To go further would, in an Essay of this brevity, be to ...

To go further would, in an Essay of this brevity, be to go too far. I will only record my belief-and I think I remember enough, and have read and thought enough to give my belief some

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