The sense of being under a Code accompanies us through the early ...

The sense of being under a Code accompanies us through the early Victorian decades. To the age of revolt, which runs from Rousseau to Shelley, succeeds the age of acquiescence; the Titans are dead, or they have been tamed.

It seems as if speculation had ceased; there is an answer to every question and usually the answer is no.

Milman is ostracized for calling Abraham a sheik; Miss Mitford is publicly reproved for calling a pudding a roly-poly; old lords have to guard their words for fear of shocking young lords, and a Member of Parliament wishing to say contracted pelvis must put it in the decent obscurity of a learned language. A Parliamentary Committee, who asked a factory woman if she had ever miscarried, brought on themselves the anger of The Times for violating the principles which should preside over such inquiries, 'a dread of ridicule and an anxious avoidance of indecency', and The Economist, a paper of exceptional intelligence, declined to go into the details of the Public Health Bill of 1847 and fill its columns with a number of unpleasant words.