A guilty conscience has never betrayed itself by a more superior sniff. ...

A guilty conscience has never betrayed itself by a more superior sniff. Absurdity and impropriety, like domesticated dragons, guard the stability of society and the peace of the home, and absurdity seems to mean any way of thinking, impropriety any way of behaving, which may impair the comfort, impeach the dignity, and weaken the defence of the middle class.

We remember with surprise that we are dealing with a race which had once, and not so long ago, been famous in its island for an independence and even eccentricity which it now only displayed abroad, and we ask what has happened to make it submit its behavior, its language, and its ideas to this drastic and vigilant censorship.

EVERY period of history may be interpreted in various ways, and the richer it is in event or thought the more

numerous will be the interpretations.

Early Victorian history might be read as the formation in the thirties of a Marxian bourgeoisie which never came into existence, the re-emergence in the forties of a more ancient tradition, a sense of the

past and a

sense of social coherence,. which never fulfilled its promise, and a compromise between the two which possessed no ultimate principle of stability.' But we must all the time remember that the Victorian age is only the island counterpart of a secular movement, as significant as the turn from the Greek Middle Ages in the time of Socrates or the Latin middle ages at the Renaissance.

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