The rounded and solid culture of the mid-Victorians corresponds to the golden ...

The rounded and solid culture of the mid-Victorians corresponds to the golden age of the staple industries. In a limited electorate, the educated classes, like the manufacturing and mercantile classes, still counted as a body; and science, fast as it was

growing, was not yet either so extensive or

minute that its achievements could not be followed and borne in mind.

The public which bought 100,000 copies of the Cornhill when Thackeray was editor, supported the stout quarterlies, and paid toll to the proprietor of the Athenaeum at the rate of £17,000 a year clear profit, was, if not a well-informed public, at least a public that desired to take care of its mind, a public trained in the keen debates of the Oxford and Free Trade movements, and ready to act as jury if not judge in any controversy that might arise in future. But by successive stages, in 1867 and 188, the educated class was disfranchised, while the advance of the arts and sciences was withdrawing them from the observation and practice of the individual educated man.

Simultaneously the lead of the great industries was shortening: and, in compensation, capital, labour, and intelligence were flowing away to light industry, distribution, salesmanship.' After the age of the great producers: Armstrong, Whitworth, Brassey, comes the age of great shops and great advertisers. Famous names still kept our station in a world which had no naturalist to equal Darwin, and no physicist to surpass Clerk Maxwell, but the springs of invention are failing, and, for the successors of the Arkwrights and Stephensons we must look to America, to France, even to Italy.

...read on >>