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 weight-that the preoccupation, social or personal, with one emotion and its manifestations was mischievous; that it produced much falsehood and much injustice, much suffering and much cruelty; but that, on the other hand, in the circumstances of the age, the instinct of the age was sound in regarding romantic love

as the right starting-point for

the family, and family life, administered with sympathy and intelligence, as the right training ground for the generations in their succession: sic fords Etruria crevit, scilicet et facta est rerum puicherrima Roma.

The incidents and circumstances, too, of this life: its durable furniture and stated hours; its evening reading and weekly church-going; its long-prepared and long-remembered holidays; its appointed visits from and to the hierarchy of grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins; a life which did not differ in essentials whether the holiday was spent at Balmoral or Broadstairs; gave to those who were within it a certain standing with themselves, and a cheerful confidence in the face of novelty, which is perhaps the clue to the Victorian paradox-the rushing swiftness of its intellectual advance, and the tranquil evolution of its social and moral ideals.

The advance was in all directions outwards, from a stable and fortified centre.

Of certain reformers of his own day, Morris tartly remarked that their aim was to turn the working classes into middle classes. Of Victorian reform as a whole the aim was the steady diffusion of culture and comfort downwards and outwards in widening circles.

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