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The Victorians: A Very Short Introduction
 VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS are for anyone wanting a stimulating
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Very Short Introductions available now:

ABOLITIONISM Richard S. Newman AMERICAN IMMIGRATION

THE ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS
Charles L. Cohen
ACCOUNTING Christopher Nobes
ADDICTION Keith Humphreys
ADOLESCENCE Peter K. Smith
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Andrew Bowie
ADVERTISING Winston Fletcher
AERIAL WARFARE Frank Ledwidge
AESTHETICS Bence Nanay
AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY
Jonathan Scott Holloway
AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGION
Eddie S. Glaude Jr
AFRICAN HISTORY John Parker and
Richard Rathbone
AFRICAN POLITICS Ian Taylor
AFRICAN RELIGIONS
Jacob K. Olupona
AGEING Nancy A. Pachana
AGNOSTICISM Robin Le Poidevin
AGRICULTURE Paul Brassley and
Richard Soffe
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
Hugh Bowden
ALGEBRA Peter M. Higgins
AMERICAN BUSINESS HISTORY
Walter A. Friedman
AMERICAN CULTURAL HISTORY
Eric Avila
AMERICAN FOREIGN RELATIONS
Andrew Preston
AMERICAN HISTORY Paul S. Boyer
David A. Gerber
AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL
HISTORY
Jennifer Ratner-­Rosenhagen
THE AMERICAN JUDICIAL SYSTEM
Charles L. Zelden
AMERICAN LEGAL HISTORY
G. Edward White
AMERICAN MILITARY HISTORY
Joseph T. Glatthaar
AMERICAN NAVAL HISTORY
Craig L. Symonds
AMERICAN POETRY David Caplan
AMERICAN POLITICAL HISTORY
Donald Critchlow
AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES
AND ELECTIONS L. Sandy Maisel
AMERICAN POLITICS
Richard M. Valelly
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY
Charles O. Jones
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Robert J. Allison
AMERICAN SLAVERY
Heather Andrea Williams
THE AMERICAN SOUTH
Charles Reagan Wilson
THE AMERICAN WEST
Stephen Aron
AMERICAN WOMEN’S HISTORY
Susan Ware
AMPHIBIANS T. S. Kemp
ANAESTHESIA Aidan O’Donnell
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
Michael Beaney
ANARCHISM Alex Prichard
ANCIENT ASSYRIA Karen Radner
ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART AND
ARCHITECTURE Christina Riggs
ANCIENT GREECE Paul Cartledge
ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN
SCIENCE Liba Taub
THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
Amanda H. Podany
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Julia Annas
ANCIENT WARFARE
Harry Sidebottom
ANGELS David Albert Jones
ANGLICANISM Mark Chapman
THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE John Blair
ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR
Tristram D. Wyatt
THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
Peter Holland
ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia
ANSELM Thomas Williams
THE ANTARCTIC Klaus Dodds
ANTHROPOCENE Erle C. Ellis
ANTISEMITISM Steven Beller
ANXIETY Daniel Freeman
and Jason Freeman
THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS
Paul Foster
APPLIED MATHEMATICS
Alain Goriely
THOMAS AQUINAS Fergus Kerr
ARBITRATION Thomas Schultz and
Thomas Grant
ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn
ARCHITECTURE Andrew Ballantyne
THE ARCTIC Klaus Dodds and
Jamie Woodward
HANNAH ARENDT Dana Villa
ARISTOCRACY William Doyle
ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes
ART HISTORY Dana Arnold
ART THEORY Cynthia Freeland
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Margaret A. Boden
ASIAN AMERICAN HISTORY
Madeline Y. Hsu
ASTROBIOLOGY David C. Catling
ASTROPHYSICS James Binney
ATHEISM Julian Baggini
THE ATMOSPHERE Paul I. Palmer
AUGUSTINE Henry Chadwick
JANE AUSTEN Tom Keymer
AUSTRALIA Kenneth Morgan
AUTISM Uta Frith
AUTOBIOGRAPHY Laura Marcus
THE AVANT GARDE David Cottington
THE AZTECS Davíd Carrasco
BABYLONIA Trevor Bryce
BACTERIA Sebastian G. B. Amyes
BANKING John Goddard and
John O. S. Wilson
BARTHES Jonathan Culler
THE BEATS David Sterritt
BEAUTY Roger Scruton
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Mark Evan Bonds
BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS
Michelle Baddeley
BESTSELLERS John Sutherland
THE BIBLE John Riches
BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Eric H. Cline
BIG DATA Dawn E. Holmes
BIOCHEMISTRY Mark Lorch
BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION
David Macdonald
BIOGEOGRAPHY Mark V. Lomolino
BIOGRAPHY Hermione Lee
BIOMETRICS Michael Fairhurst
ELIZABETH BISHOP
Jonathan F. S. Post
BLACK HOLES Katherine Blundell
BLASPHEMY Yvonne Sherwood
BLOOD Chris Cooper
THE BLUES Elijah Wald
THE BODY Chris Shilling
THE BOHEMIANS David Weir
NIELS BOHR J. L. Heilbron
THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
Brian Cummings
THE BOOK OF MORMON
Terryl Givens
BORDERS Alexander C. Diener and
Joshua Hagen
THE BRAIN Michael O’Shea
BRANDING Robert Jones
THE BRICS Andrew F. Cooper
BRITISH CINEMA Charles Barr
THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION
Martin Loughlin
THE BRITISH EMPIRE Ashley Jackson
BRITISH POLITICS Tony Wright
BUDDHA Michael Carrithers
BUDDHISM Damien Keown
BUDDHIST ETHICS Damien Keown
BYZANTIUM Peter Sarris
CALVINISM Jon Balserak
ALBERT CAMUS Oliver Gloag
CANADA Donald Wright
CANCER Nicholas James
CAPITALISM James Fulcher
CATHOLICISM Gerald O’Collins
CAUSATION Stephen Mumford and
Rani Lill Anjum
THE CELL Terence Allen and
Graham Cowling
THE CELTS Barry Cunliffe
CHAOS Leonard Smith
GEOFFREY CHAUCER David Wallace
CHEMISTRY Peter Atkins
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY Usha Goswami
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Kimberley Reynolds
CHINESE LITERATURE Sabina Knight
CHOICE THEORY Michael Allingham
CHRISTIAN ART Beth Williamson
CHRISTIAN ETHICS D. Stephen Long
CHRISTIANITY Linda Woodhead
CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS
Russell Foster and Leon Kreitzman
CITIZENSHIP Richard Bellamy
CITY PLANNING Carl Abbott
CIVIL ENGINEERING
David Muir Wood
THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Thomas C. Holt
CLASSICAL LITERATURE William Allan
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY
Helen Morales
CLASSICS Mary Beard and
John Henderson
CLAUSEWITZ Michael Howard
CLIMATE Mark Maslin
CLIMATE CHANGE Mark Maslin
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
Susan Llewelyn and
Katie Aafjes-van Doorn
COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL
THERAPY Freda McManus
COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
Richard Passingham
THE COLD WAR Robert J. McMahon
COLONIAL AMERICA Alan Taylor
COLONIAL LATIN AMERICAN
LITERATURE Rolena Adorno
COMBINATORICS Robin Wilson
COMEDY Matthew Bevis
COMMUNISM Leslie Holmes
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Ben Hutchinson
COMPETITION AND ANTITRUST
LAW Ariel Ezrachi
COMPLEXITY John H. Holland
THE COMPUTER Darrel Ince
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Subrata Dasgupta
CONCENTRATION CAMPS
Dan Stone
CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
Ross H. McKenzie
CONFUCIANISM Daniel K. Gardner
THE CONQUISTADORS
Matthew Restall and
Felipe Fernández-Armesto
CONSCIENCE Paul Strohm
CONSCIOUSNESS Susan Blackmore
CONTEMPORARY ART Julian
Stallabrass
CONTEMPORARY FICTION
Robert Eaglestone
CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY
Simon Critchley
COPERNICUS Owen Gingerich
CORAL REEFS Charles Sheppard
CORPORATE SOCIAL
RESPONSIBILITY Jeremy Moon
CORRUPTION Leslie Holmes
COSMOLOGY Peter Coles
COUNTRY MUSIC Richard Carlin
CREATIVITY Vlad Glăveanu
CRIME FICTION Richard Bradford
CRIMINAL JUSTICE Julian V. Roberts
CRIMINOLOGY Tim Newburn
CRITICAL THEORY
Stephen Eric Bronner
THE CRUSADES
Christopher Tyerman
CRYPTOGRAPHY Fred Piper and
Sean Murphy
CRYSTALLOGRAPHY A. M. Glazer
THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION
Richard Curt Kraus
DADA AND SURREALISM
David Hopkins
DANTE Peter Hainsworth and
David Robey
DARWIN Jonathan Howard
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
Timothy H. Lim
DECADENCE David Weir
DECOLONIZATION Dane Kennedy
DEMENTIA Kathleen Taylor
DEMOCRACY Naomi Zack
DEMOGRAPHY Sarah Harper
DEPRESSION Jan Scott and
Mary Jane Tacchi
DERRIDA Simon Glendinning
DESCARTES Tom Sorell
DESERTS Nick Middleton
DESIGN John Heskett
DEVELOPMENT Ian Goldin
DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY
Lewis Wolpert
THE DEVIL Darren Oldridge
DIASPORA Kevin Kenny
CHARLES DICKENS Jenny Hartley
DICTIONARIES Lynda Mugglestone
DINOSAURS David Norman
DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
Joseph M. Siracusa
DOCUMENTARY FILM
Patricia Aufderheide
DREAMING J. Allan Hobson
DRUGS Les Iversen
DRUIDS Barry Cunliffe
DYNASTY Jeroen Duindam
DYSLEXIA Margaret J. Snowling
EARLY MUSIC Thomas Forrest Kelly
THE EARTH Martin Redfern
EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE Tim Lenton
ECOLOGY Jaboury Ghazoul
ECONOMICS Partha Dasgupta
EDUCATION Gary Thomas
EGYPTIAN MYTH Geraldine Pinch
EIGHTEENTH‑CENTURY BRITAIN
Paul Langford
THE ELEMENTS Philip Ball
EMOTION Dylan Evans
EMPIRE Stephen Howe
EMPLOYMENT LAW David Cabrelli
ENERGY SYSTEMS Nick Jenkins
ENGELS Terrell Carver
ENGINEERING David Blockley
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Simon Horobin
ENGLISH LITERATURE Jonathan Bate
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
John Robertson
ENTREPRENEURSHIP Paul Westhead
and Mike Wright
ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS
Stephen Smith
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
Robin Attfield
ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
Elizabeth Fisher
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS
Andrew Dobson
ENZYMES Paul Engel
EPICUREANISM Catherine Wilson
EPIDEMIOLOGY Rodolfo Saracci
ETHICS Simon Blackburn
ETHNOMUSICOLOGY Timothy Rice
THE ETRUSCANS Christopher Smith
EUGENICS Philippa Levine
THE EUROPEAN UNION
Simon Usherwood and John Pinder
EUROPEAN UNION LAW
Anthony Arnull
EVANGELICALISM
John G. Stackhouse Jr.
EVIL Luke Russell
EVOLUTION Brian and
Deborah Charlesworth
EXISTENTIALISM Thomas Flynn
EXPLORATION Stewart A. Weaver
EXTINCTION Paul B. Wignall
THE EYE Michael Land
FAIRY TALE Marina Warner
FAMILY LAW Jonathan Herring
MICHAEL FARADAY
Frank A. J. L. James
FASCISM Kevin Passmore
FASHION Rebecca Arnold
FEDERALISM Mark J. Rozell and
Clyde Wilcox
FEMINISM Margaret Walters
FILM Michael Wood
FILM MUSIC Kathryn Kalinak
FILM NOIR James Naremore
FIRE Andrew C. Scott
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Michael Howard
FLUID MECHANICS Eric Lauga
FOLK MUSIC Mark Slobin
FOOD John Krebs
FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY
David Canter
FORENSIC SCIENCE Jim Fraser
FORESTS Jaboury Ghazoul
FOSSILS Keith Thomson
FOUCAULT Gary Gutting
THE FOUNDING FATHERS
R. B. Bernstein
FRACTALS Kenneth Falconer
FREE SPEECH Nigel Warburton
FREE WILL Thomas Pink
FREEMASONRY Andreas Önnerfors
FRENCH LITERATURE John D. Lyons
FRENCH PHILOSOPHY
Stephen Gaukroger and Knox Peden
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
William Doyle
FREUD Anthony Storr
FUNDAMENTALISM Malise Ruthven
FUNGI Nicholas P. Money
THE FUTURE Jennifer M. Gidley
GALAXIES John Gribbin
GALILEO Stillman Drake
GAME THEORY Ken Binmore
GANDHI Bhikhu Parekh
GARDEN HISTORY Gordon Campbell
GENES Jonathan Slack
GENIUS Andrew Robinson
GENOMICS John Archibald
GEOGRAPHY John Matthews and
David Herbert
GEOLOGY Jan Zalasiewicz
GEOMETRY Maciej Dunajski
GEOPHYSICS William Lowrie
GEOPOLITICS Klaus Dodds
GERMAN LITERATURE Nicholas Boyle
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY
Andrew Bowie
THE GHETTO Bryan Cheyette
GLACIATION David J. A. Evans
GLOBAL CATASTROPHES Bill McGuire
GLOBAL ECONOMIC HISTORY
Robert C. Allen
GLOBAL ISLAM Nile Green
GLOBALIZATION Manfred B. Steger
GOD John Bowker
GÖDEL’S THEOREM A. W. Moore
GOETHE Ritchie Robertson
THE GOTHIC Nick Groom
GOVERNANCE Mark Bevir
GRAVITY Timothy Clifton
THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND
THE NEW DEAL Eric Rauchway
HABEAS CORPUS Amanda L. Tyler
HABERMAS James Gordon Finlayson
THE HABSBURG EMPIRE
Martyn Rady
HAPPINESS Daniel M. Haybron
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
Cheryl A. Wall
THE HEBREW BIBLE AS LITERATURE
Tod Linafelt
HEGEL Peter Singer
HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood
THE HELLENISTIC AGE
Peter Thonemann
HEREDITY John Waller
HERMENEUTICS Jens Zimmermann
HERODOTUS Jennifer T. Roberts
HIEROGLYPHS Penelope Wilson
HINDUISM Kim Knott
HISTORY John H. Arnold
THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY
Michael Hoskin
THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY
William H. Brock
THE HISTORY OF CHILDHOOD
James Marten
THE HISTORY OF CINEMA
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING
Doron Swade
THE HISTORY OF EMOTIONS
Thomas Dixon
THE HISTORY OF LIFE Michael Benton
THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS
Jacqueline Stedall
THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE
William Bynum
THE HISTORY OF PHYSICS
J. L. Heilbron
THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL
THOUGHT Richard Whatmore
THE HISTORY OF TIME
Leofranc Holford‑Strevens
HIV AND AIDS Alan Whiteside
HOBBES Richard Tuck
HOLLYWOOD Peter Decherney
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
Joachim Whaley
HOME Michael Allen Fox
HOMER Barbara Graziosi
HORMONES Martin Luck
HORROR Darryl Jones
HUMAN ANATOMY Leslie Klenerman
HUMAN EVOLUTION Bernard Wood
HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY
Jamie A. Davies
HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT Adrian Wilkinson
HUMAN RIGHTS Andrew Clapham
HUMANISM Stephen Law
HUME James A. Harris
HUMOUR Noël Carroll
IBN SĪNĀ (AVICENNA)
Peter Adamson
THE ICE AGE Jamie Woodward
IDENTITY Florian Coulmas
IDEOLOGY Michael Freeden
THE IMMUNE SYSTEM
Paul Klenerman
INDIAN CINEMA
Ashish Rajadhyaksha
INDIAN PHILOSOPHY Sue Hamilton
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Robert C. Allen
INFECTIOUS DISEASE Marta L. Wayne
and Benjamin M. Bolker
INFINITY Ian Stewart
INFORMATION Luciano Floridi
INNOVATION Mark Dodgson and
David Gann
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Siva Vaidhyanathan
INTELLIGENCE Ian J. Deary
INTERNATIONAL LAW
Vaughan Lowe
INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION
Khalid Koser
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Christian Reus-Smit
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
Christopher S. Browning
INSECTS Simon Leather
INVASIVE SPECIES Julie Lockwood and
Dustin Welbourne
IRAN Ali M. Ansari
ISLAM Malise Ruthven
ISLAMIC HISTORY Adam Silverstein
ISLAMIC LAW Mashood A. Baderin
ISOTOPES Rob Ellam
ITALIAN LITERATURE
Peter Hainsworth and David Robey
HENRY JAMES Susan L. Mizruchi
JAPANESE LITERATURE Alan Tansman
JESUS Richard Bauckham
JEWISH HISTORY David N. Myers
JEWISH LITERATURE Ilan Stavans
JOURNALISM Ian Hargreaves
JAMES JOYCE Colin MacCabe
JUDAISM Norman Solomon
JUNG Anthony Stevens
THE JURY Renée Lettow Lerner
KABBALAH Joseph Dan
KAFKA Ritchie Robertson
KANT Roger Scruton
KEYNES Robert Skidelsky
KIERKEGAARD Patrick Gardiner
KNOWLEDGE Jennifer Nagel
THE KORAN Michael Cook
KOREA Michael J. Seth
LAKES Warwick F. Vincent
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
Ian H. Thompson
LANDSCAPES AND
GEOMORPHOLOGY
Andrew Goudie and Heather Viles
LANGUAGES Stephen R. Anderson
LATE ANTIQUITY Gillian Clark
LAW Raymond Wacks
THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS
Peter Atkins
LEADERSHIP Keith Grint
LEARNING Mark Haselgrove
LEIBNIZ Maria Rosa Antognazza
C. S. LEWIS James Como
LIBERALISM Michael Freeden
LIGHT Ian Walmsley
LINCOLN Allen C. Guelzo
LINGUISTICS Peter Matthews
LITERARY THEORY Jonathan Culler
LOCKE John Dunn
LOGIC Graham Priest
LOVE Ronald de Sousa
MARTIN LUTHER Scott H. Hendrix
MACHIAVELLI Quentin Skinner
MADNESS Andrew Scull
MAGIC Owen Davies
MAGNA CARTA Nicholas Vincent
MAGNETISM Stephen Blundell
MALTHUS Donald Winch
MAMMALS T. S. Kemp
MANAGEMENT John Hendry
NELSON MANDELA Elleke Boehmer
MAO Delia Davin
MARINE BIOLOGY Philip V. Mladenov
MARKETING
Kenneth Le Meunier-FitzHugh
THE MARQUIS DE SADE John Phillips
MARTYRDOM Jolyon Mitchell
MARX Peter Singer
MATERIALS Christopher Hall
MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS
Richard Earl
MATHEMATICAL FINANCE
Mark H. A. Davis
MATHEMATICS Timothy Gowers
MATTER Geoff Cottrell
THE MAYA Matthew Restall and
Amara Solari
THE MEANING OF LIFE
Terry Eagleton
MEASUREMENT David Hand
MEDICAL ETHICS Michael Dunn and
Tony Hope
MEDICAL LAW Charles Foster
MEDIEVAL BRITAIN John Gillingham
and Ralph A. Griffiths
MEDIEVAL LITERATURE Elaine
Treharne
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
John Marenbon
MEMORY Jonathan K. Foster
METAPHYSICS Stephen Mumford
METHODISM William J. Abraham
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION
Alan Knight
MICROBIOLOGY Nicholas P. Money
MICROBIOMES Angela E. Douglas
MICROECONOMICS Avinash Dixit
MICROSCOPY Terence Allen
THE MIDDLE AGES Miri Rubin
MILITARY JUSTICE Eugene R. Fidell
MILITARY STRATEGY
Antulio J. Echevarria II
JOHN STUART MILL Gregory Claeys
MINERALS David Vaughan
MIRACLES Yujin Nagasawa
MODERN ARCHITECTURE
Adam Sharr
MODERN ART David Cottington
MODERN BRAZIL Anthony W. Pereira
MODERN CHINA Rana Mitter
MODERN DRAMA
Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr
MODERN FRANCE
Vanessa R. Schwartz
MODERN INDIA Craig Jeffrey
MODERN IRELAND Senia Pašeta
MODERN ITALY Anna Cento Bull
MODERN JAPAN
Christopher Goto-Jones
MODERN LATIN AMERICAN
LITERATURE
Roberto González Echevarría
MODERN WAR Richard English
MODERNISM Christopher Butler
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY Aysha Divan
and Janice A. Royds
MOLECULES Philip Ball
MONASTICISM Stephen J. Davis
THE MONGOLS Morris Rossabi
MONTAIGNE William M. Hamlin
MOONS David A. Rothery
MORMONISM
Richard Lyman Bushman
MOUNTAINS Martin F. Price
MUHAMMAD Jonathan A. C. Brown
MULTICULTURALISM Ali Rattansi
MULTILINGUALISM John C. Maher
MUSIC Nicholas Cook
MUSIC AND TECHNOLOGY
Mark Katz
MYTH Robert A. Segal
NANOTECHNOLOGY Philip Moriarty
NAPOLEON David A. Bell
THE NAPOLEONIC WARS
Mike Rapport
NATIONALISM Steven Grosby
NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE
Sean Teuton
NAVIGATION Jim Bennett
NAZI GERMANY Jane Caplan
NEGOTIATION Carrie Menkel-Meadow
NEOLIBERALISM Manfred B. Steger
and Ravi K. Roy
NETWORKS Guido Caldarelli and
Michele Catanzaro
THE NEW TESTAMENT
Luke Timothy Johnson
THE NEW TESTAMENT AS
LITERATURE Kyle Keefer
NEWTON Robert Iliffe
NIETZSCHE Michael Tanner
NINETEENTH‑CENTURY BRITAIN
Christopher Harvie and
H. C. G. Matthew
THE NORMAN CONQUEST
George Garnett
NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS
Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green
NORTHERN IRELAND
Marc Mulholland
NOTHING Frank Close
NUCLEAR PHYSICS Frank Close
NUCLEAR POWER Maxwell Irvine
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Joseph M. Siracusa
NUMBER THEORY Robin Wilson
NUMBERS Peter M. Higgins
NUTRITION David A. Bender
OBJECTIVITY Stephen Gaukroger
OBSERVATIONAL ASTRONOMY
Geoff Cottrell
OCEANS Dorrik Stow
THE OLD TESTAMENT
Michael D. Coogan
THE ORCHESTRA D. Kern Holoman
ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
Graham Patrick
ORGANIZATIONS Mary Jo Hatch
ORGANIZED CRIME
Georgios A. Antonopoulos and
Georgios Papanicolaou
ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY
A. Edward Siecienski
OVID Llewelyn Morgan
PAGANISM Owen Davies
PAKISTAN Pippa Virdee
THE PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI
CONFLICT Martin Bunton
PANDEMICS Christian W. McMillen
PARTICLE PHYSICS Frank Close
PAUL E. P. Sanders
IVAN PAVLOV Daniel P. Todes
PEACE Oliver P. Richmond
PENTECOSTALISM William K. Kay
PERCEPTION Brian Rogers
THE PERIODIC TABLE Eric R. Scerri
PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD
Timothy Williamson
PHILOSOPHY Edward Craig
PHILOSOPHY IN THE ISLAMIC
WORLD Peter Adamson
PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY
Samir Okasha
PHILOSOPHY OF LAW
Raymond Wacks
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
Barbara Gail Montero
PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICS
David Wallace
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Samir Okasha
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Tim Bayne
PHOTOGRAPHY Steve Edwards
PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY Peter Atkins
PHYSICS Sidney Perkowitz
PILGRIMAGE Ian Reader
PLAGUE Paul Slack
PLANETARY SYSTEMS
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
PLANETS David A. Rothery
PLANTS Timothy Walker
PLATE TECTONICS Peter Molnar
PLATO Julia Annas
POETRY Bernard O’Donoghue
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY David Miller
POLITICS Kenneth Minogue
POLYGAMY Sarah M. S. Pearsall
POPULISM Cas Mudde and
Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser
POSTCOLONIALISM Robert J. C. Young
POSTMODERNISM Christopher Butler
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
Catherine Belsey
POVERTY Philip N. Jefferson
PREHISTORY Chris Gosden
PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY
Catherine Osborne
PRIVACY Raymond Wacks
PROBABILITY John Haigh
PROGRESSIVISM Walter Nugent
PROHIBITION W. J. Rorabaugh
PROJECTS Andrew Davies
PROTESTANTISM Mark A. Noll
PSEUDOSCIENCE Michael D. Gordin
PSYCHIATRY Tom Burns
PSYCHOANALYSIS Daniel Pick
PSYCHOLOGY Gillian Butler and
Freda McManus
PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC
Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis
PSYCHOPATHY Essi Viding
PSYCHOTHERAPY Tom Burns and
Eva Burns-Lundgren
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Stella Z. Theodoulou and Ravi K. Roy
PUBLIC HEALTH Virginia Berridge
PURITANISM Francis J. Bremer
THE QUAKERS Pink Dandelion
QUANTUM THEORY
John Polkinghorne
RACISM Ali Rattansi
RADIOACTIVITY Claudio Tuniz
RASTAFARI Ennis B. Edmonds
READING Belinda Jack
THE REAGAN REVOLUTION Gil Troy
REALITY Jan Westerhoff
RECONSTRUCTION Allen C. Guelzo
THE REFORMATION Peter Marshall
REFUGEES Gil Loescher
RELATIVITY Russell Stannard
RELIGION Thomas A. Tweed
RELIGION IN AMERICA Timothy Beal
THE RENAISSANCE Jerry Brotton
RENAISSANCE ART
Geraldine A. Johnson
RENEWABLE ENERGY Nick Jelley
REPTILES T. S. Kemp
REVOLUTIONS Jack A. Goldstone
RHETORIC Richard Toye
RISK Baruch Fischhoff and John Kadvany
RITUAL Barry Stephenson
RIVERS Nick Middleton
ROBOTICS Alan Winfield
ROCKS Jan Zalasiewicz
ROMAN BRITAIN Peter Salway
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Christopher Kelly
THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
David M. Gwynn
ROMANTICISM Michael Ferber
ROUSSEAU Robert Wokler
RUSSELL A. C. Grayling
THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY
Richard Connolly
RUSSIAN HISTORY Geoffrey Hosking
RUSSIAN LITERATURE Catriona Kelly
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
S. A. Smith
SAINTS Simon Yarrow
SAMURAI Michael Wert
SAVANNAS Peter A. Furley
SCEPTICISM Duncan Pritchard
SCHIZOPHRENIA Chris Frith and
Eve Johnstone
SCHOPENHAUER
Christopher Janaway
SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Thomas Dixon and Adam R. Shapiro
SCIENCE FICTION David Seed
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
Lawrence M. Principe
SCOTLAND Rab Houston
SECULARISM Andrew Copson
SEXUAL SELECTION Marlene Zuk and
Leigh W. Simmons
SEXUALITY Véronique Mottier
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Stanley Wells
SHAKESPEARE’S COMEDIES
Bart van Es
SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS AND
POEMS Jonathan F. S. Post
SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGEDIES
Stanley Wells
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Christopher Wixson
MARY SHELLEY Charlotte Gordon
THE SHORT STORY Andrew Kahn
SIKHISM Eleanor Nesbitt
SILENT FILM Donna Kornhaber
THE SILK ROAD James A. Millward
SLANG Jonathon Green
SLEEP Steven W. Lockley and
Russell G. Foster
SMELL Matthew Cobb
ADAM SMITH
Christopher J. Berry
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
John Monaghan and Peter Just
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Richard J. Crisp
SOCIAL WORK Sally Holland and
Jonathan Scourfield
SOCIALISM Michael Newman
SOCIOLINGUISTICS John Edwards
SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce
SOCRATES C. C. W. Taylor
SOFT MATTER Tom McLeish
SOUND Mike Goldsmith
SOUTHEAST ASIA James R. Rush
THE SOVIET UNION Stephen Lovell
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
Helen Graham
SPANISH LITERATURE Jo Labanyi
THE SPARTANS Andrew J. Bayliss
SPINOZA Roger Scruton
SPIRITUALITY Philip Sheldrake
SPORT Mike Cronin
STARS Andrew King
STATISTICS David J. Hand
STEM CELLS Jonathan Slack
STOICISM Brad Inwood
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
David Blockley
STUART BRITAIN John Morrill
SUBURBS Carl Abbott
THE SUN Philip Judge
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY
Stephen Blundell
SUPERSTITION Stuart Vyse
SYMMETRY Ian Stewart
SYNAESTHESIA Julia Simner
SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY Jamie A. Davies
SYSTEMS BIOLOGY Eberhard O. Voit
TAXATION Stephen Smith
TEETH Peter S. Ungar
TERRORISM Charles Townshend
THEATRE Marvin Carlson
THEOLOGY David F. Ford
THINKING AND REASONING
Jonathan St B. T. Evans
THOUGHT Tim Bayne
TIBETAN BUDDHISM
Matthew T. Kapstein
TIDES David George Bowers and
Emyr Martyn Roberts
TIME Jenann Ismael
TOCQUEVILLE Harvey C. Mansfield
LEO TOLSTOY Liza Knapp
TOPOLOGY Richard Earl
TRAGEDY Adrian Poole
TRANSLATION Matthew Reynolds
THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES
Michael S. Neiberg
TRIGONOMETRY
Glen Van Brummelen
THE TROJAN WAR Eric H. Cline
TRUST Katherine Hawley
THE TUDORS John Guy
TWENTIETH‑CENTURY BRITAIN
Kenneth O. Morgan
TYPOGRAPHY Paul Luna
THE UNITED NATIONS
Jussi M. Hanhimäki
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES
David Palfreyman and Paul Temple
THE U.S. CIVIL WAR Louis P. Masur
THE U.S. CONGRESS Donald A. Ritchie
THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
David J. Bodenhamer
THE U.S. SUPREME COURT
Linda Greenhouse
UTILITARIANISM
Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and
Peter Singer
UTOPIANISM Lyman Tower Sargent
VATICAN II Shaun Blanchard and
Stephen Bullivant
VETERINARY SCIENCE James Yeates
THE VICTORIANS Martin Hewitt
THE VIKINGS Julian D. Richards
VIOLENCE Philip Dwyer
THE VIRGIN MARY
Mary Joan Winn Leith
THE VIRTUES Craig A. Boyd and
Kevin Timpe
VIRUSES Dorothy H. Crawford
VOLCANOES Michael J. Branney and
Jan Zalasiewicz
VOLTAIRE Nicholas Cronk
WAR AND RELIGION Jolyon Mitchell
and Joshua Rey
WAR AND TECHNOLOGY
Alex Roland
WATER John Finney
WAVES Mike Goldsmith
WEATHER Storm Dunlop
THE WELFARE STATE David Garland
WITCHCRAFT Malcolm Gaskill
WITTGENSTEIN A. C. Grayling
WORK Stephen Fineman
WORLD MUSIC Philip Bohlman
WORLD MYTHOLOGY
David Leeming
THE WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATION Amrita Narlikar
WORLD WAR II Gerhard L. Weinberg
WRITING AND SCRIPT
Andrew Robinson
ZIONISM Michael Stanislawski
ÉMILE ZOLA Brian Nelson

Available soon:
IMAGINATION Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei

For more information visit our website

www.oup.com/vsi/
 Martin Hewitt

THE
VICTORIANS
A Very Short Introduction
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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© Martin Hewitt 2023
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Contents

Acknowledgements xvii

List of illustrations xix

1 The challenge of generalization 1

2 Living with the Victorians 4

3 The Victorian as period 19

4 Victorianism 39

5 Victorian configurations 56

6 Eminent and less eminent Victorians 80

7 The Victorian world 104

References 121

Further reading 125

Index 129
Acknowledgements

This study emerges out of several decades of thinking about the

Victorians, encouraged at the outset by Asa Briggs’s idiosyncratic
but always stimulating doctoral supervision, and then confirmed
by the investment in Victorian Studies made with the loyal
backing of Christine Hallas and other colleagues at what was then
Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds. The demands of an
inaugural lecture for the professorship of Victorian Studies to
which the college appointed me did much to coalesce the ideas
about the Victorian as period summarized in Chapter 2, and
students on undergraduate and MA courses helped me refine the
ideas there and in Chapter 1.

Over the years I’ve also drawn insight and inspiration from
colleagues and collaborators involved in the Journal of Victorian
Culture, the British Association for Victorian Studies, and at
Manchester Metropolitan, Huddersfield, and Anglia Ruskin
universities, far too many to mention. I’m especially grateful to
Patrick Leary, Tom Crook, and Susie Steinbach for reading drafts,
and to Joanne Shattock, Isobel Armstrong, Peter Mandler, Helen
Rogers, Rohan McWilliam, David Amigoni, and the late and
much-­missed Simon Dentith, Malcolm Chase, and Rosemary
Mitchell for assistance and encouragement with other work on
which this volume has drawn.
 For all this, without the repeated patience of the VSI
commissioning editors at OUP, and then the support of the
Principal and Fellows of St Hugh’s College Oxford, who elected me
as the first Belcher Visiting Fellow in Victorian Studies in 2019,
and then adjusted and extended the fellowship in response to the
disruptions of COVID-­19, it is doubtful whether the book would
have been completed. I hope this portrait is a fitting return for the
hospitality of the St Hugh’s community and the generosity of
Margaret Belcher in funding the Fellowship.
The Victorians

xviii
List of illustrations

1 Hew Locke, Foreign Exchange 5 Pears Soap advert based on

(Birmingham, 2022) 17 J. E. Millais, Bubbles
Hew Locke, Foreign Exchange, 2022 (c.1888–9) 101
© Hew Locke. All rights reserved, © Victoria and Albert
DACS/Artimage 2022 Museum, London

2 Edwin Landseer, Windsor 6 John Brett, Britannia’s

Castle in Modern Times Realm (1880) 105
(1841–3) 46 John Brett/Tate Images
Royal Collection Trust/Wikipedia
7 ‘Hold on John’, Punch
3 Holman Hunt, The Light of (2 April 1898) 106
the World (1853) 71 Punch Cartoon
Keble College/Wikipedia Library/TopFoto

4 Luke Fildes, Applicants for

Admission to a Casual Ward
(1874) 89
Luke Fildes/Tate Images
Chapter 1
The challenge of
generalization

A century ago, when the Victorian age had scarcely begun to be a

focus of scholarly examination, perhaps the most influential of all
studies of the period opened with the provocative assertion that
‘The history of the Victorian Age will never be written. We know
too much about it.’ A hundred years later even though they have
largely passed out of direct memory, it remains even more the case
that we know too much about the Victorians to render them in
35,000 words without systematic and often flagrant
simplification.

Every characterization in the pages which follow is defenceless

against the challenge that it underestimates complexity, smooths
over unevenness, and excludes difference, that it offers a ‘totalizing
account’ which would dissolve on closer scrutiny. Indeed any
impression to the contrary must be tenaciously resisted. The
reader should be under no illusion. Victorian Britain was a
mass of tensions and contradictions, of inconsistencies and
incompatibilities, of instabilities and competing subjectivities. It
was fiercely insular and determinedly global; the railway age and
the heyday of the horse; both smug and anxious; a time of
extraordinary change but also of remarkable continuities,
producing enormous wealth and pitiless poverty. Patterns were
always under construction; conventions never uncontested. All
characterizations of the Victorian—­and in particular all
1
 formulations of what ‘the Victorians’ did or thought—­in the pages
that follow must be read as prefaced with a silent ‘on balance’, ‘on
the whole’, or ‘predominantly’, omitted in the interests of economy
and elegance.

None of this inevitable historical messiness is any reason not to

generalize or to attempt to sketch the broad patterns and norms
around which diversity was arrayed, and this is especially so in the
case of the Victorians. Partly because Victorian culture was
shared across all classes and groups to a remarkable extent, the
intellectual life of the period profoundly structured by pervasive
underlying assumptions, languages, and reference points. Partly
because Victorian Britain was marked by particularly powerful
social norms and expectations, bearing down on, to a greater or
lesser extent, all parts of society. Partly because in exploring the
shades and balances of the period, writings about the Victorians,
including those by the Victorians themselves, have very often
The Victorians

begun with a general interpretation which they have proceeded to

dismantle or subvert. The Victorians, as the historian John
Darwin has put it, ‘agreed on generalities but differed in detail’,
and it is only by comprehending the general pattern that we can
fully understand the nature of the diversity.

As historians have long recognized, one of the most difficult

challenges in studying any period in the past is getting a sense of
the particular combination of ways of thinking and ways of living
which characterized it. This is perhaps especially true of ‘the
Victorians’ because the Victorian period has been the site of a set
of particularly rich engagements from a variety of perspectives,
which have not always, indeed perhaps rarely, successfully
balanced the two poles of thinking and living.

In what follows I have tried to develop a portrait of the period

which explores the mutually constitutive operations of experience,
action, and reflection. I do so by addressing five questions which
seem to me to be critical in approaching the Victorians. Why do
2
we continue to be fascinated by the Victorians? How does the
Victorian age work as a historical period? What was distinctive
about it, what gave it its particular character? Who were the
Victorians, as individuals and collectivities? How far were those
phenomena we might describe as ‘Victorian’ a global presence in
the 19th century?

Beyond this, the aim here has been to be as capacious as space will
allow, and to extend the cast of individual Victorians presented
in the discussion as far as possible. This requires a certain
allusiveness and even abruptness. Some of the individuals
appearing in the following pages will be familiar, others less so,
but in either case there has been little time for introductions.
While their significance for the argument should be apparent, the
fullness of their example may have to be the subject of further

The challenge of generalization

investigation.

3
Chapter 2
Living with the Victorians

What is it about the Victorians? Over 120 years after the death of
Queen Victoria they still command a degree of attention and
occupy a place in British and indeed global culture which no other
period in history can match, possessing a cultural significance and
carrying a degree of ideological freight without parallel. It isn’t
hard to recognize from the ways that the term ‘Victorian’ is used in
contemporary debates and discourse that it is rarely a neutral
designation like ‘19th century’. Rather it is almost always a loaded
term. While most period designations, even ‘Elizabethan’ or
‘Georgian’, are denotative and might describe a body of literary
work or a style of furniture, ‘Victorian’ is connotative, laden with
associations and meanings. Not surprising, then, that the
Victorians not only have their own ‘-ism’ but also have their
homologue, ‘Dickensian’.

Why are the Victorians unique in this respect and what are the
consequences?

There are several obvious reasons. The length of the reign, the
longest in British history before it was surpassed in the 21st
century by Elizabeth II, has something to do with it, as do
elements of nostalgia for a time when Britain was the dominant
global superpower, and western versions of culture and progress
were spreading rapidly across the globe. But equally important is
4
the seemingly perpetual presence of the Victorians, the extent to
which despite enormous effort they have never been safely
consigned to the past, so that we continue to feel ourselves
cohabiting with them. In Britain in particular, the history of the
20th century looks at times like one long and largely unsuccessful
struggle to escape, of the fear expressed by the mid-­century poet
and writer David Paul that ‘We have not succeeded . . . in relegating
[the Victorians] to a glass case. They refuse to stay in the case.’

‘It remains true’, Paul added, ‘that in most Englishmen today [he
was writing in 1952] you can still find an ill-­concealed Victorian.’
The same might have been said about colonial societies and other
parts of the anglophone world. And of course, although the
Victorian period might have ended in 1901, the Victorians
themselves lived on. Even restricting the designation to those who

Living with the Victorians

were 21 in 1901, it was not until 1955 that Britain had its first
post-­Victorian prime minister. Winston Churchill’s leadership in
the Second World War, William Beveridge’s conception of the
British welfare state, Frederick Lugard’s classic development of
‘indirect’ imperial rule in Africa were all in this sense Victorian.
The architect of mid-­century macro-­economic orthodoxy, John
Maynard Keynes, was himself only six months shy of 18 when
Victoria died, and older more firmly Victorian thinkers lived on to
shape western intellectual life, even when they professed to
repudiate the Victorians. The philosopher Bertrand Russell, born
1872, continued to publish until the year before his death in 1970.

Even as the youngest Victorians passed away indirect influences

remained. In his autobiography, the British Conservative prime
minister John Major recalled the formative presence of his own
Victorian father, born in 1879, who had ‘a tireless fund of evocative
stories that stretched back well into the nineteenth century’. The
historian Asa Briggs, whose writings and talks established the
orthodox view of the Victorians for much of the second half of the
20th century, and who was brought up in inter-­war Keighley,
which he remembered as ‘very much a Victorian community’,
5
 conceded that he was himself ‘a bit of a Victorian’. And intimacy
with the great Victorians was constantly replenished through the
final third of the century by a new breed of monumental
biographies, typified by Robert Blake’s Disraeli (1966) and
Gordon Haight’s George Eliot (1968), in which psychology
replaced piety or prejudice, and the Victorians became flesh
and blood.

As the Victorians died off, their material legacies lived on.

Commentators who set out to capture the essence of 20th-­century
Britain were struck by the extent to which it bore the impress of
its Victorian past. J. B. Priestley’s English Journey (1934) offers a
classic presentation of a Britain saturated with Victorian survivals,
from eccentric manor houses straight out of Dickens, to industrial
regions clinging to the vestiges of Victorian prosperity. Painted
around the same time, Victorian Survival (1931) by the American
painter Grant Wood offered a parallel reflection, juxtaposing a
The Victorians

forbidding great-­aunt with the telephone as contrasting forms of

endurance. In Britain in the 1960s slum clearances, and even the
‘Beeching axe’ which led to the closure of over 2,300 railway
stations and 5,000 miles of railway lines, only tinkered with these
survivals. The national railway network, the sewage and sanitation
system, the housing stock and urban morphologies, all remained
predominantly Victorian. At the end of the century British
popular bestsellers and television shows were still exploring ‘What
the Victorians Did for Us’, or ‘the Victorian-­ness of the world in
which we live’. And this is without the vestigial Victorianism of the
eponymous Victorian brands the British consumer continues to
buy—­Rimmel cosmetics, Cadbury’s chocolates, and Colman’s
mustards—­or the Tennyson Avenues and Crimea Streets in which
some continue to live. If outside Britain such material legacies
were less obvious, there were still innumerable everyday survivals,
postage stamps and photographs, policemen and detectives,
department stores and museums, golf and tennis, bacon and eggs
and breakfast cereals, bicycles and telephones, Christmas cards
and valentines.
6
Intellectual legacies also appear almost anywhere one looks. Our
everyday language is full of Victorian coinages: ‘dinosaur’,
‘scientist’, ‘colour prejudice’, even the concept of ‘normal’. The
British version of parliamentary democracy and the Houses of
Parliament as its embodiment are both essentially Victorian.
British welfare policies and institutions continue to be powerfully
influenced by the sorts of assumptions which were enshrined in
the Victorian Poor Law. The British film classification regime and
the variants implemented by almost all its settler colonies are to
all intents an extension of Victorian approaches to the censorship
of books and plays.

It was once conventional to argue that despite the forces of inertia

the sexual and generational revolts of the 1960s brought ‘The End
of Victorianism’. But the 1960s counter-­culture had a surprisingly

Living with the Victorians

complicated relationship with the Victorians, repudiating their
puritanism and prudery, but gravitating to ‘Victorian’
neighbourhoods in cities like San Francisco, absorbing Victorian
dress into hippie style, drawing inspiration from all sorts of
Victoriana, from the Pre-­Raphaelite influences of Led Zeppelin’s
lead guitarist Jimmy Page to the scraps of Victoriana running
through the Beatles’ 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
album. Imperial pretensions were abandoned, but only by force,
and beliefs about the incapacities and inadequacies of
colonial peoples and minority populations remained virtually
unquestioned not just up to but well beyond independence, as the
challenges of the 2010s, the Windrush scandal and the Black Lives
Matter movements, show.

Certainly the 1960s did nothing to dent the pre-­eminence of the

Victorians in the anglophone cultural canon. In many respects the
opposite. After 1918 the reputation of the Victorians had gone into
steep decline. Cleaner modern lines swept away old decorative
styles, and Victorian art and literature, condemned for their
sentimentality, was not far behind; paintings by first-­rank artists
were sold off for just a few pounds. But this almost 40-­year eclipse
7
 proved temporary, and by the 1950s, the tide was turning again.
Victorian architecture was once more appreciated, the market
for Victorian art rebounded, communities repackaged and
relaunched their Victorian museums and heritage attractions, and
Victorian literature consolidated its position as the default
playbook for costume drama in film and television. The ‘Main
Street U.S.A.’ attraction at the early post-­war Disney theme parks
was a nostalgic celebration of American small town life at the very
end of the Victorian period. A host of late 20th- and early
21st-­century novelists, including Margaret Attwood, Peter
Ackroyd, Peter Carey, Beryl Bainbridge, and Amitav Ghosh, have
excavated the Victorian condition in fiction. The extraordinary
frenzy of attention prompted by the centenary of Victoria’s death
in 2001, from the major Victorian Britain exhibition at the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London, to satellite events like the
Tate’s Victorian Nudes, did nothing to exhaust appetites, as the
willingness of museum curators across the English-­speaking
The Victorians

world to give space to an ever-­extending variety of Victoriana,

from Victorian photocollage (Chicago, 2010) to ‘badass rebel
women’ of the era (New York Museum of Modern Art, 2018),
demonstrates.

And on top of this lies the extraordinary phenomenon of what has

come to be known as ‘neo-­Victorianism’, exemplified by the
enormous success of Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet (2002),
and Fingersmith (2005), or the popularity of Sherlock Holmes
reinterpretations or the stylized Victorian violence of the BBC/
Amazon Prime’s Ripper Street (2012‒16). There is nothing
unusual in literature engaging with history, but the later 20th and
21st centuries have invested in an especially powerful way in the
interpenetrations of the Victorian past, the present, and the
imagined future. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s The
Difference Engine (1990) and Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age
(1995) helped spawn a whole gothic steampunk subculture across
not just fiction, film, and television but also comic books and
videogames. In the Marvel Comics universe the character of
8
Mister Sinister as a Victorian Darwinist scientist was
progressively articulated from his original appearance in the
1980s through to the 2010s, and the Assassin’s Creed game series
and films like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen take
advantage of the gaslit gothic aesthetics of Victorian London while
trading on knowing reference to Charles Dickens, Florence
Nightingale, Charles Darwin, and Alexander Graham Bell.

Perhaps understandably, critical approaches to neo-­Victorian

literature rarely dwell on concerns about its historical
representativeness. Events like the 2019 Compass festival in
Connecticut, with its ‘Splendid Teapot Racing’ event, open to
anyone bringing a teapot on a remote-­controlled chassis,
alongside demonstrations of cane fighting and parasol defence,
luxuriate in the unapologetic anachronism of steampunk. But by

Living with the Victorians

focusing attention on the ways in which the past might intrude
into the present and shape the future, neo-­Victorianism vividly
affirms the ways the Victorians continue to haunt the
contemporary consciousness.

Using the Victorians

The dazzling inventiveness of neo-­Victorianism reminds us that
the afterlife of the Victorians has always been as much a matter of
usefulness as status, a reflection of the ease with which they can be
appropriated and exploited. And indeed, throughout the 20th
century the Victorians functioned as a strange hybrid of sounding
board and Aunt Sally: not just in Britain, the Victorians remained
the 20th century’s cultural ‘other’, a context against which new
generational identities were forged and new ways of thinking
tempered, a space in which values could be challenged or affirmed,
and evil could be both distanced and domesticated. Historical
fictions of the Victorian have never entirely escaped from the
pleasures of pointing out just how far the Victorians fell short
of their own self-­image and our subsequent achievement.
Neo-­Victorian literatures often seek to validate contested elements
9
 of contemporary culture by affirming their vibrancy and longevity
against the cul de sac of Victorian values.

These strategies inflected attitudes towards the Victorians for

much of the 20th century. In the years before and after the First
World War vitriolic anti-­Victorianism of the sort propounded by
modernists like Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound was increasingly
vocal, and the patrician sneers of Lytton Strachey and the
Bloomsbury Group echoed at least superficially by T. S. Eliot and
W. H. Auden sought to undermine Victorian influence rather than
enshrine it. The foundational text of this attitude, Strachey’s
Eminent Victorians (1918), presented his four Victorians, Thomas
Arnold, Florence Nightingale, Cardinal Manning, and General
Gordon, not as the heroes of Victorian hagiography, but as
drunkards, tyrants, humbugs, and charlatans. Anti-­Victorianism
became part of the small change of anglophone intellectual life,
the period a soft option for satire, as in Auden’s later description
The Victorians

of it as the time when ‘Crying went out and the cold bath came in |
with drains, bananas, bicycles and tin’. Victorianism was also a foil
for attempts to throw off prudery and sexual repression in the
1960s, as in John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman
(1969), or a frame for 21st-­century reappraisals of colonialism as
represented by Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers (2000) or
Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries (2013).

At the same time, the 20th-­century reaction against the Victorians

always had its counterpoint in figures who looked back fondly on
the certainties and social stability of the Victorians in comparison
with the vulgarity and atomism of inter-­war Britain. It would be
easy to dismiss this as rather shallow nostalgia. And no doubt
there was a powerful current of wistfulness. The Second World
War imbued the Victorian era with a new allure. The public was
suddenly, as the critic Basil Willey put it, ‘yearning nostalgically
after it. . . . In that distant mountain country all that we now lack
seems present in abundance: not only peace, prosperity, plenty
and freedom, but faith, purpose and buoyancy.’ The enormous
10
popularity of Kilvert’s Diary, the journal of an obscure Victorian
clergyman, published in 1941, suggests that in a period of
industrial decline and international eclipse, the Victorians, ruling
the waves and overseeing an empire on which the sun never set,
were suddenly more attractive company.

In more recent decades versions of the Victorians have tended to

combine both approaches, offering the opportunity to revel in our
modern superiorities while cultivating a sneaking envy for the
privileges and simplicities of the Victorians, who emerge as
materialist but enterprising, complacent but secure, inclined to
hypocrisy but at least able to believe. In the late 1990s the British
Labour cabinet minister Roy Hattersley paid testimony to the
instructive escapism offered by a volume such as Asa Briggs’s
Victorian People, confessing that ‘When, during previous

Living with the Victorians

Christmasses, joy to all men has become too much to bear, I have
regularly slipped away to the lavatory with Robert Lowe, Anthony
Trollope, John Bright and Arthur Roebuck.’

It is a short step from nostalgia to deference, or at least a belief

that the Victorians still have much to teach us. From H. W.
Massingham’s The Great Victorians (1932) to Dinah Birch’s Our
Victorian Education (2008) the Victorians have also been framed
as the first moderns, wrestling—­often successfully—­with the same
kinds of problems facing 20th-­century society, and so a source of
useful ideals, attitudes, and philosophies of practical assistance, as
a way of obtaining ‘courage and refreshment’. And a 21st-­century
justification of Victorian literature like Philip Davis’s Why
Victorian Literature Still Matters (2008) offers a different but
equally nutritive sense of the importance of the Victorians and
their literature: that they provide assumptions which offer
empowerment and a space to feel, that it is impossible, as Davis
puts it, ‘to do without what the Victorians stand for’.

The controversy which raged in Britain in the 1980s when

Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party urged a return to
11
 ‘Victorian Values’ was only the most infamous instance of this
approach. Thatcher’s determination to use the Victorians both as
morally exemplary and as part of the ‘great landmarks’ of British
history ensured that they occupied a central place in Britain’s
late-­century school curriculum. In America, neo-­liberalism readily
drew on Victorian examples in critique of the social problems of
permissive society. And although we might imagine that 40 years
on few would look to the Victorians in this way, political leaders
continue to proclaim Victorian heroes and inspirations, Theresa
May paying homage to Joseph Chamberlain, Boris Johnson to
Churchill, and even Barack Obama drawing inspiration for his
central message of hope from the Victorian painting of that name
by George Frederick Watts.

Implications
When so much is at stake there is a danger of inauthenticity, of
The Victorians

making representations of the Victorians more self-­serving than

truth-­serving. To be fair, popular presentations of the Victorian
often show a scrupulous concern with ‘accuracy’ at the level of
detail, a sense of the responsibility the present owes to the past,
but at times there is little regard to truth in the reimagination
of spirit or message, or as respects the underlying historicity
of the past. This is certainly the case for film and television
representations, all the more treacherous as a guide for their
superficial realism. For example, the understandable imperatives
of diverse casting which have gathered pace within the last few
years tend to create an image of the past which while not
absolutely dishonest gives a fundamentally misleading impression
of the racial textures of Victorian society. The lampoon in
Malcolm Bradbury’s novella Cuts (1987), in which the film
executive responds to an actor’s questioning that Gladstone would
actually appear naked before Victoria playing the ukulele by
asserting that the ‘fictionalised verity’ he aims at takes real people
and events, but is ‘not slavishly bound to actual facts’, offers a

12
reflection of the priority often given by television executives and
popular novelists to message over veracity.

The relationship between the contemporary climate crisis and

Victorian environmentalism offers a case in point. Although in
recent years several Victorians have been co-­opted as pioneers of
modern environmental campaigns, Victorian notions of the
environment were primarily shaped by long-­standing equations
of nature with God’s creation and the Victorians’ ‘green’
consciousness was largely a function of literary anti-­industrialism
and anti-­modernism. So, while they could be horrified at the
desecration wrought by a new railway, Victorians were largely
unmoved by the way in which British globalism ravaged forests in
New Brunswick, depleted soils in the American south, and
exterminated carnivores in India and Africa. The Victorians

Living with the Victorians

provide little useful guidance in responding to these issues.
Despite occasional interventions like W. H. Hudson’s The Purple
Land that England Lost (1885), or the cultural critic John
Ruskin’s The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century (1884), the
Victorians’ emphasis was generally on the sort of local landscape
preservation championed by Hardwicke Rawnsley and the
National Trust, or an anxiety about resource exhaustion, rather
than the sorts of global sustainability concerns which emerged in
the 20th century. Instead of seeking self-­validation through
demonstrating the length of the history of ecocritical sensibilities,
or searching for Victorian values and expressions which might be
serviceable in the contemporary moment, ideals such as Ruskin’s
‘There is no wealth but life’, we might better understand the
Victorian ‘greens’ by accepting them on their own terms.

The danger in approaching the Victorians through the lens of our

own preoccupations like this is that we isolate, we decontextualize,
we over-­interpret, we pay insufficient attention to circulation,
readership, or influence, and in doing so, we make the Victorians
appear a great deal more like us than they actually were.

13
 The Victorians offer a standing risk of this sort of unwarranted
familiarity. The adaptations of the Forsyte Saga by the BBC (1967)
and ITV/PBS (2002‒3) both offered a subtle canvas of
contradictory forces and tendencies, but television adaptors and
film directors regularly succumb to the temptation to make
Victorian characters in the image of their contemporary
equivalents. Despite the factories, the global reach, the suburbs,
and the sewers, we are not living in the Victorian period. Despite
the illusion of empathy, the Victorians were not just like us.
To understand the Victorians requires awareness (and indeed
wariness) of these differences: of the powerful pull of religious
belief, not least on those who most stridently repudiated it; of
precarity and the spectre of absolute poverty; of the casual racism
founded on distance and contempt rather than closeness and a
sense of threat; of a social mobility in which hierarchies of caste
and class were difficult to shake off and wealth rarely decisive.
We need to consider the implications of a society without cars and
The Victorians

planes, radio and television, recorded music and the internet,

where branded food and world cuisines, domestic showers,
electrical appliances, old age pensions, and paperbacks were all
largely unheard of.

Debates over ‘cancel culture’ are at one level a symptom of the

challenge of managing not only the presence but also the distance
of the past, and of the entanglements of memory and honour.
Each historical moment must decide for itself which achievements
and which attitudes it wishes to celebrate and which to condemn,
while accepting that its standards are as transient and of the
moment as those it judges. The arguments against
commemorating Cecil Rhodes’s violent and exploitative
imperialism or the sexism of many Darwinists’ belief in female
biological inferiority are unanswerable. The moral reckoning of
the often-­hidden sources of individual and collective wealth is a
necessary part of uncovering both realities and legacies of the past
which are often occluded. But care is needed. If contemporary
uses should be governed by contemporary values, historical
14
understanding is rarely achieved by the desire to apportion guilt.
That a Darwin or a Huxley shared some of the common prejudices
of their period should not prevent us from celebrating their
intellectual achievements (while distancing ourselves from those
prejudices). It certainly cannot prevent us from recognizing their
historical importance, just as the significance Mary Seacole has for
our own perspective on the past should not disguise her relative
insignificance to her contemporaries. We can judge our Victorian
heritage from the standpoint of the present, but we can only
understand Victorian history from the perspective of the past.

Writing the Victorians

That each era composes its own version of the past is a truism
especially apposite for the Victorians, because their continued

Living with the Victorians

presence has inevitably prompted conflicts of possession, and the
resulting rollercoaster reputation makes writings about the period
a particularly treacherous terrain. Many of the ‘classic’ studies of
the Victorians, including George Malcolm Young’s Victorian
England: Portrait of an Age (1936), Walter Houghton’s The
Victorian Frame of Mind (1957), and George Kitson Clark’s The
Making of Victorian England (1965), which all carry the illusion
of currency because of the frequency with which they have been
repackaged and republished, were an intervention in the debates
of their day over the reputation of the Victorians as much as they
were dispassionate histories, and they need to be read with this
in mind.

More recently university historians have been reluctant to address

the Victorians as an appropriate object of general interpretation,
except perhaps in the sort of student-­oriented texts of which Susie
Steinbach’s Understanding the Victorians (2016) and David
Gange’s The Victorians: A Beginner’s Guide (2016) are the best
examples. It has most often been literary scholars, of whom
Richard Altick and Robin Gilmour stand out, who have produced
broad academically rigorous interpretative surveys of the period.
15
 Tellingly, none of the multi-­volume histories of Britain of the last
40 years have chosen to take the Victorian period, or even some
loose approximation to it, for the scope of a volume. Theodore
Hoppen’s The Mid-­Victorian Generation for the Oxford History of
Britain comes closest, but even this covers only the central
two-­thirds, from 1846 to 1886. In part these vagaries are just a
consequence of editorial fiat or a reflection of the general fear that
reifying any period distorts and fragments the continuities and
complexities of history. But they also reflect a specific suspicion
and at times disdain of the claims of the ‘Victorian’ as a period or
category, of the sort intimated by the observation of the American
cultural historian Morse Peckham that ‘If we think that there once
actually existed “Victorian culture” we shall for ever be hopelessly
confused.’

Seeking to avoid the dangers of datedness drives readers to the

steady stream of more ambitious syntheses for the general reader,
The Victorians

including A. N. Wilson’s The Victorians (2002), Simon Heffer’s

High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of the Modern (2013),
and innumerable television-­series spin-­offs like Jeremy Paxman’s
The Victorians (2009). Inevitably, some of these are stronger than
others. Despite a substantial cargo of detail, they often reveal
more about the idiosyncrasies of the authors than of the
Victorians. Even when they escape from the unrelenting rhetoric
of relevance, more recent popular studies often offer a view of the
Victorians which reinforces the privileging in contemporary
culture of personal characteristics and individual stories over
general contexts and collective experiences, emphasizing ideas
and perceptions over action and reality.

Conclusion
The controversies over Rhodes and the apparently insatiable
public demand for the Victorians across all media show that as the
21st century has progressed the implications of the Victorians
have become no less urgent, even if as each year passes the
16
 Living with the Victorians

1. Hew Locke, Foreign Exchange (Birmingham, 2022).

17
 intimacy of our connection to them weakens. The appearance of
Jacob Rees-­Mogg’s The Victorians: Twelve Titans Who Forged
Britain in 2019 with its portentous moralizing, and of Hew
Locke’s reimagining of the city’s statue of Queen Victoria in his
Foreign Exchange installation for the Birmingham 2022 Festival,
make clear that it would still be premature to assume that the
Victorians have finally been safely consigned to history (Figure 1).

We should be clear about what we want from the Victorians and

careful that our sense of them does not become whatever is most
serviceable to us; that, for example, we emphasize their doubt
because we have embraced our own, or condemn their certitudes
because we have lost ours. We should be wary of the extremes
both of nostalgia and of moral outrage. Above all, it will help in
understanding the Victorians if we keep the different contexts, the
tensions, and complexities of Victorian Britain in play: the
conjunctions of change and continuity, ambition and
The Victorians

complacency, conformity and division.

18
Chapter 3
The Victorian as period

When exactly was the Victorian period? And what does it mean to
think of it as a historical ‘period’?

For an era possessed of a literary canon, famous ‘greats’, and even

its own ‘-ism’, the limits adopted for the Victorian period have
been remarkably flexible. Formally Victoria acceded to the throne
on 20 June 1837 and reigned until her death on 22 January 1901.
Although unfashionable, treating the years between these dates as
a discrete period is not as ridiculous as it might at first seem.
Victoria did have a historical influence in her own right. Her
accession brought a change of mood, a sense of a break with the
Hanoverian monarchy of the long 18th century; and her longevity
eventually encouraged contemporaries to think of themselves as
Victorians, living in an ‘age’ defined by the Queen. We should not
underestimate both Victoria’s active involvement in government
decisions, and the cultural glue she provided, embodied in the
proliferation of images, the statues, the Victoria Halls and Victoria
Parks. Republicanism was insignificant; the Victorians were
instinctively monarchist.

The Queen read the official papers and met regularly with her
prime ministers to tell them her thoughts and wishes, and where
the standing of the monarchy was particularly touched, as in
respect to her elevation to Empress of India in 1876, her wishes
19
 were even more important. A conservative by temperament,
someone whose attitudes and sensibilities progressed little from
adolescence, H. G. Wells’s description of her as ‘a giant
paperweight that for half a century sat upon men’s minds’ was
only partly unfair. It was no accident that Lytton Strachey’s
Bloomsbury counterblast against the Victorians progressed from
his Eminent Victorians to the Queen as a supplementary target of
his corrosive invective.

But as the influence of the monarchy declined the regnal dates of

kings and queens have diminishing relevance for national history,
and so, for all the contemporary acknowledgement of her
importance, scholars have generally been reluctant to take the
notion of a unitary Victorian period seriously. It is suggested that
the apparent coherence given by Victoria’s longevity is at best
spurious, and at worst positively debilitating, constraining history
within unhelpful boundaries and even hobbling these years with a
The Victorians

gendered identity which has fed into the negative stereotypes of

Victorianism. The literary historian John Lucas maintained that
‘except in the most rigorously controlled of contexts, “Victorian”
and “Victorianism” are terms we could well do without. They are
all too frequently employed in ways that are chronologically
indefensible, historically dubious, intellectually confusing, and
ideologically unacceptable.’

Part of the problem has been the lack of any real consensus about
what we mean when we say that there was a ‘Victorian period’,
and in suggesting here that there was one, we should clear up
some potential misapprehensions. Defending the idea of a
Victorian period does not mean slavishly insisting on the specific
importance of 1837 or 1901. Nor does it imply that the beginnings
and ends of the Victorian years were marked by a revolutionary
historical rupture which effectively broke connections with what
came before or after. Neither does it suggest any sort of
unchangeableness or stasis across the 60 years, especially as

20
regards ideology or ‘zeitgeist’ (that invaluable German word which
is used to indicate the ‘world view’ of a period or collective).

We might as easily say the reverse is true. Britain in 1895 was in

many, perhaps in most, respects quite different from the Britain of
1840. The reign was punctuated with important moments of
change, not least in the national mood or the tone of public life,
moments which require us to think of it as comprising several
distinct sub-­periods. Nonetheless the start and end of the reign
did coincide with moments of wide-­ranging transformation, even
if only roughly, and there were powerful persistences and
continuities across the intervening period. Where change occurred
during the Victorian years, it often did so within consistent
vectors of development, lines laid down in the early years and
progressively worked through.

The Victorian as period

The rest of this chapter aims to provide an outline of the
chronological pattern which resulted, and tries to give a sense of
the structure of the period. My argument is that the nature and
timings of the major historical watersheds of the 1830s and the
years around 1900, and of the less dramatic but still important
transitions which occurred between these two moments,
effectively create a series of sub-­periods.

Traditionally, historical surveys talk of early, mid-, and late

Victorian Britain. With respect to the first, it is widely accepted
that the years 1848‒51 saw a meaningful change, ushering in the
mid-­Victorian years. Conventionally the mid-­Victorian period is
presented as coming to an end in the years 1867‒70. The problem
with this approach is that it leaves a final late Victorian period
which is as long as the first two periods combined and lacks their
coherent character. At times a solution has been sought by
pushing the end of the mid-­Victorian years on to the mid-­1870s or
even 1880. But there is no obvious divide in the mid-­1870s, and a
better solution is to acknowledge that the important events of the

21
 mid-­1880s amount to a further inflection point, creating not three
but four sub-­periods, early, mid-, and (from around 1885) late
Victorian, and also what we might describe as the ‘high Victorian’
period from the late 1860s to the mid-­1880s. As we shall see, each
of these has their distinct identity while sharing in the underlying
character of the period as a whole which is explored further in the
next chapter.

Opening
In truth, 1837 was a rather nondescript year to serve as the start of
a momentous period in British history. It marked less a point of
departure than the culmination of a period of intense and
widespread change. At best it offered portents, signs of the times
which can be read retrospectively. So, the start of a new reign
required a general election which saw one Benjamin Disraeli
elected to parliament for the first time. The first steamship
The Victorians

designed for crossing the Atlantic, the SS Great Western, was

launched and the patent on which the first commercial telegraph
operated was granted. The publication of Thomas Carlyle’s French
Revolution set the tone for a period haunted by the fear of
revolution, while the first serial issues of Dickens’s Oliver Twist
announced the arrival of a new literature. But these are merely
straws in the wind.

The year 1832, on the other hand, offers a much more convincing
starting point for a Victorian period. Agricultural unrest and the
agitation for reform made this a year of profound crisis. The
‘Great’ Parliamentary Reform Act which emerged was in many
respects a limited and conservative measure, leaving most of the
adult population without a vote, and the aristocratic elites
entrenched in control. But its significance lay less in the numbers
than in the sense of modernization it mobilized. Politics was
opened up. The most egregious examples of ‘rotten boroughs’ with
tiny electorates were removed, and the representation of
expanding towns and cities was enhanced. And most importantly,
22
a hotchpotch of eligibilities to vote based on accidents of custom
and tradition was replaced by just two parallel urban and rural
franchises each based on deliberate calculations of individual
fitness. Quite suddenly, the politics of the 1810s seemed part of a
distant past. Sir James Mackintosh, the Whig law reformer,
reflecting on the changes, suggested that it was as if he had ‘lived
in two different countries and conversed with people who spoke
different languages’.

And this was just the start. By ushering in almost continuous

Whig government from 1832 to 1841 the Act made the 1830s a
pivotal decade of reform, a word now much more frequently
and approvingly invoked. Mackintosh’s remarks reflected the
wider transformation which took place with notable rapidity in
the middle years of the 1830s, a transformation which in many
respects marked the end of Britain’s ancien régime. The

The Victorian as period

18th-­century legal system, based on the ‘bloody code’ of savage
intimidatory sentencing, was dismantled, leading amongst other
things to a rapid decline in the use of the death penalty. The
remnants of the political repression introduced during and
immediately after the Napoleonic wars were relaxed. The evils of
unrestricted industrial working hours were addressed, albeit only
in part, by factory legislation. The position of the Church of
England as in effect an executive arm of the state was dramatically
loosened, and the self-­serving and often self-­nominating closed
municipal corporations which had ruled many of the country’s
towns were reformed to allow greater popular control and
efficiency.

One of the ironies of these measures is that they occurred largely

independently of social and economic change. It was once the
historical orthodoxy that the political reforms of the 1830s were
responses to a sudden and dramatic ‘industrial revolution’ and the
rise of a new middle class, but nowadays it is recognized that the
economic and social change of the early 19th century, although
enormous, was also both gradual and uneven, characterized by the
23
 coexistence of old handicrafts and the new industries, and the
survival of established forms of paternalism and deference
alongside new class divisions brought about by the replacement of
relationships of mutual social obligation with transactions
confined to the ‘cash nexus’ of wages. Even so, there can be no
doubt that in important respects the 1830s did see the
acceleration of a series of changes which had been creating a
radically different ‘industrial society’, and that this, and in
particular the urban forms and problems which it produced,
became suddenly and intensely visible at this moment. In many
respects Victorian culture was shaped henceforth by its confused
and often contradictory attempts to make sense of this new
urban world.

Early Victorian challenge

Central to this awareness was a preoccupation with what came to
The Victorians

be known as the ‘Condition of England question’. Despite its

continued growth, early Victorian Britain was a period of
particularly sustained economic hardship and intense social
conflict. Rapid and largely uncontrolled urban development
would have inevitably brought challenges of sanitation and
pollution, especially given the rudimentary contemporary
understandings of the causes of disease. These were compounded
by the overcrowding and deterioration caused by the failure of
housing supply to keep pace with urban population growth, and
by a violent cycle of economic booms and slumps which produced
periodic episodes of large-­scale unemployment.

For sanitary reformers, urban investigators, and social novelists

the dislocations of the ‘Hungry Forties’ encouraged a diagnosis of
societal malaise rooted in an imagined deformation of the
working-­class home and family life. In contrast, the groups
bearing the brunt of the hardship blamed their position on their
political and economic impotence and mounted a sustained
challenge to the parliamentary settlements of the early 1830s,
24
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Modo reges atque tetrarchas,
Omnia magna, loquens; modo “sit mihi mensa tripes, et
Concha salis puri, et toga, quæ defendere frigus,
Quamvis crassa, queat ——.”

In short—in manner, in language, in business, and in pleasure, he sets an

admirable example of mutability, which we shall always make it our study
to imitate—especially when we take up our pens.
Of Sir Wilfrid’s nephew and heir we shall here say nothing, as his
character has been elsewhere noticed by another hand, under the name of
Arthur Clavering. We pass on, therefore, to the Baronet’s maiden sister,
Lady Rachel Weathercock, who is nowise deficient in the peculiarities for
which her family is remarkable. Lady Rachel has now attained her fiftieth
year; the caprices and follies of her youth have gradually subsided; and, in
many points, she has become more stationary than a Weathercock ought to
be. Her character, however, is just saved by one little ingredient, by which a
person who is unacquainted with her habits may be not a little puzzled.
Lady Rachel is an inveterate reader, an inveterate talker, and an inveterate
arguer. You might therefore suppose that few subjects could be started upon
which the lady would not ground a dispute; but it is no such thing. Her
ladyship possesses such a delightful pliability of opinion, that it is hardly
possible to differ from her upon any topic. We have heard her advocate and
abuse every school of painting or poetry in almost immediate succession.
She combats to-day the very opinions she maintained yesterday; yet, upon
the first semblance of a contradiction, she veers round forthwith, and proves
herself a more accommodating antagonist, if possible, than the Neapolitans.
Mr. Oakley was three hours in conversation with her; and though the burden
of his song was No, No, No, he was unable to pick a quarrel. Like Sir
Robert Bramble and Job, “they couldn’t disagree—and so they parted.”
The only remaining member of the family is Sir Wilfrid’s niece. How
delightful is your mutability, charming Leonora! You are like a chess-board
which is checquered with black and white squares alternately; or a
melodrama, in which the tears of Tragedy are relieved by the follies of
Farce; or a day in April which blends rain with sunshine, summer with
winter; or the Etonian, in which the serious is united with the absurd, and
pathos is intermingled with puns. What a wardrobe must be yours! To-day
you assume the costume of the victim Mary—to-morrow that of the
executioner Elizabeth; you put off the diamonds of the queen for the
garland of the peasant, the curls of the coquette for the veil of the nun. Your
voice has a thousand tones; your lips have a thousand smiles—all of them
distinct, yet all of them engaging! You are always the same, yet always
varying; consistent only in your inconsistency! Be always so! We will build
a fane in the most beautiful region of Fancy, where no two flowers shall
wear the same hue, no two days be of the same length or temperature: light
gales shall breathe from all points of the compass by turns, and clear
streams shall vary their course every hour; stability shall be sacrilege—and
Leonora shall be the Goddess of the Temple.
 GOLIGHTLY’S ESSAY ON BLUES.

A FRAGMENT.
Lady Dabble is a True Blue. She is a meddler in literature of every sort and
description. Poetry and prose, pamphlets and plays, sermons and satires,
overtures and odes—all are her hobbies, all are the objects of her patronage,
all are subjects of her harangues. At her house is the synod held: where
criticism and tea are poured out together, where sweet sugar and sweeter
sonnets melt in delicious unison. It is delightful to spend a few hours at
Lady Babble’s conversazione. All inferior wits and witlings flit around her
like twinkling stars; while her ladyship, with her full-moon face—but it
strikes us that this is a very old simile.
Of all Blues we think the Light Blue is our favourite. Mark the
surprising difference which exists between Emilia, the Light Blue, and her
sister Sophia, the Dark Blue. Sophia is a fine vessel, properly supplied with
everything requisite for a long voyage; but a villanous slow sailer. Emilia is
the same vessel, but certainly it has thrown out a vast quantity of ballast. To
speak in plainer language, Sophia talks learnedly, and puzzles you; Emilia
talks learnedly, and amuses you; the latter sets you a laughing, and the
former sends you to sleep. A good painter will select for his picture only the
most agreeable parts of the landscape which lies before him; a good talker
will notice the more pleasing points of his subject, while he will throw aside
the tedious. But, alas! Emilia will describe a statue, while Sophia is treating
of a finger; and the Light Blue will analyse the “Iliad,” while the Dark Blue
is discussing the Digamma.
Fannia is a fair one, who endeavours to unite the extreme of fashionable
dress with the extreme of unfashionable Blue-ism. Mr. Hodgson made a vile
pun (as usual) when he denominated her a Blue Belle.
The only remaining Blue of whom we shall here make mention is Eva,
the Sky-Blue. The habit of talking sentiment, in which the Sky-Blue
commonly indulges, is in general sufficiently annoying; but in the person of
Eva, far be it from us to apply to it such an epithet. Eva is always in heroics:
she never speaks a sentence which is not fit to go into a German romance.
All this sits very well upon youth and beauty, but in age and ugliness it is
insufferable. Eva has a pretty pair of blue eyes, a finely polished neck, an
enchanting white arm, and a voice withal, which is never heard but in a
whisper, an aria, or a sigh. She has, in short, such a talent at turning our
brains, that our Secretary has not inappositely styled her “Blue Ruin.”
 OLD BOOTS.

“Whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
’Twixt his stretched footing and the scaffoldage.”
Shakespeare.

Ι have got a pair of old boots.

I bought them at Exeter last summer, and they withstood all the malice
of Devonshire paviours in a most inconceivable style. The leather was of a
most editorial consistency, and the sole resembled a quarto. It was in them
that I revisited the desolate habitation of my infancy; it was their heavy
clanging sound which echoed through those deserted apartments. It was in
them, too, that I tottered upon the perilous summit of the Ness; and it was in
them that I got wet to the knees in the disagreeable tempest which waited
upon the Dawlish regatta. How many pleasant moments, how many dear
friends, do they recall to my recollection! It was with their ponderous
solidity that I astonished the weak nerves of one, and trod upon the weak
toes of another. Every inch of them, old and emeriti as they are, is pregnant
with some delightful, some amiable sensation. It was in them that I
excogitated the first number of the Etonian—they shall live to look upon
the last! I cannot say they were ever very elegant in shape or texture. Like
the genius of my friend Swinburne, they possessed more intrinsic strength
than outward polish. They served me well, however, and travelled with me
to town.
I happened to put them on one wet morning in April. Whatever form or
fashion they formerly boasted was altogether extinct; they were as
shapeless as an unlicked cub, and as dusky as a cloud on a November
morning. I beheld their fallen appearance with some dismay. “I shall be
stared at,” I said; “I had better take them off!” But I thought of their former
services, and resolved to keep them on.
They had brought their plated heels from the country, and they made a
confounded noise upon the pavement as I walked along. Ding, dong, they
went at every step, as if I carried a belfry swung at my toes. “This is a
disagreeable sort of accompaniment,” I said. “I had better dismiss the
musicians.” Just at that moment a young baronet passed me, attended by a
fine dog. The dog was in high spirits, and made rather too much noise for
the contemplative mood of his master. “Silence, Cæsar! Be quiet, Cæsar!”
No, it was all in vain, and Cæsar was kicked into the gutter. “That was
cruel!” I said, “to dismiss an old servant, because he was a note too loud! I
think I will keep my boots!”
I walked in the Park with Golightly. By the side of my stable footcase his
neat and dapper instep cut a peculiarly smart figure; it was a Molossus tête-
à-tête with a Pyrrhic; an Etonian’s skiff moored alongside of a coal-barge.
Golightly’s meditations seemed to be of the same cast; he once or twice
turned his eyes to the ground, as I thought with no very complacent aspect.
“My friends grow ashamed of me,” I said to myself; “I must part with my
boots!” As I made up my mind to the sacrifice, Lady Eglantine met us, with
her husband. She was constantly looking another way, nodding familiarly to
the young men she met, and endeavouring to convince the world how
thoroughly she despised the lump of earth which she was obliged to drag
after her. “There is a woman,” said Frederick, “who married Sir John for his
money, and has not the sense to appear contented with the bargain she has
made. What can be more silly than to look down thus upon a man of
sterling worth, because he happened to be born a hundred miles from the
metropolis?” “What can be more silly?” I repeated inwardly; “I will never
look down on my boots again!”
We continued our walk, and Golightly began his usual course of
strictures upon the place and the company. Hurried away by the constant
flow of jest and wildness with which he embellishes his sketches, I soon
forgot both the boots, which had been the theme of my reflections, and the
moral lessons which the subject had produced. There was an awkward stone
in the way! Oh my unfortunate heels! I broke down terribly, and was very
near bringing my companion after me. I rose, and went on in great dudgeon.
“This will never do,” I muttered; “this will never do! I must positively
cashier my boots!” I looked up: an interesting girl was passing, leaning on
the arm of a young man, whose face I thought I recognized. She looked pale
and feeble; and, when my friend bowed to her with unusual attention, she
seemed embarrassed by the civility. “That is Anna Leith,” said Golightly;
“she made an imprudent match with that young man about a year ago, and
her father has refused to see her ever since. Poor girl! She is in a rapid
decline, and the remedies of her physicians have no effect upon a broken
spirit. I would never cast off a beloved object for a single false step!”
“I will keep my boots,” I exclaimed: “though they make a thousand!”
 ON THE DIVINITIES OF THE ANCIENTS.
To a person inquiring into the manners and customs of ancient nations, the
religion which they professed and the gods which they worshipped will
always appear objects of the greatest curiosity. And this will not be
wondered at when we remember how intimately the religion of a State must
necessarily be connected with its civil policy. In former times, when
ignorance and superstition flourished side by side, the aid of a divinity was
required for the carrying into effect of the most frivolous designs. No poem
could succeed until the Muses were called upon in a well-rounded
hexameter, no war could prosper until Mars was propitiated by a sufficiency
of roast beef. The ancients appear to have had some faint idea of the
ubiquity of the Deity; but, not comprehending how such a faculty had been
vested in a single divinity, they formed to themselves a set of superior
powers, calculated to attend upon every emergency, from Jupiter, the god of
thunder, to Tussis, the god of coughing. It is therefore evident that the
consideration of the religious ideas of the ancients must be inseparably
united with the study of the other parts of their history.
In the remarks which I am about to make upon this subject, I must
request that one or two preliminaries may be kept in mind. First, that the
characters of the constant supporters of the Etonian may not be implicated
in the blunders of an occasional correspondent; and, secondly, that I may
not be understood as endeavouring to compose a regular essay or treatise
upon the topic which is before me. I have no more the inclination than I
have the ability to attempt such a task. The observations which I shall have
occasion to make will be merely the unripe fruit of an hour of leisure;
merely a few unconnected hints, thrown out at random for your amusement,
Mr. Editor, and that of my fellow-citizens. If they are pleased with them,
they will thank me, and I am sufficiently repaid: if not—n’importe—they
will at least give me credit for good intentions.
The first point which I shall notice is the opinion which the ancients
entertained of the power and authority of their heavenly rulers. And as the
study of fallen religions is principally useful as it shows to us the
superiority of that religion which can never fall, let us first see upon what
footing Christianity stands in this respect. In my eyes, and in the eyes of
every one upon whom the light of revelation has dawned, the mention of a
God presupposes an idea of infinite, irresistible, indisputable power. One
cannot form the most remote conception of a deity whose powers or
existence should be in any way limited. One of the distinguishing attributes
of Christianity is that with its God nothing is impossible. He is omniscient,
omnipresent, omnipotent. Can we say the same of the gods of the heathen
—“the gods of wood and stone, the work of men’s hands?”
Alas! alas! They raised ghosts, and they raised tempests; they scolded,
and they thundered; they drank nectar, and drove doves: but when anything
serious was to be done—when a battle was to be decided, or an empire
overthrown, they were frequently as powerless to slay or to save as the
sceptre which they wielded or the cloud which they bestrode. Let us call
before us some of the most formidable, and examine into their pretensions
to Olympus.
Come down, then, Jupiter, from the little pedestal on which I have placed
your plaster effigy! Come down, father of men and gods, counsel-giving,
wide-thundering, cloud-compelling! Come down, thou who overthrowest
the Titans and abusest thy wife; thou who art so fond of the voice of prayer
and the smoke of hecatombs; thou who hast so many epithets and so many
sons; thou who governest Olympus and meritest Bridewell! Where are thy
frowns and thy nods? thy muscles and thy sinews? thy darts and thy
decrees? Where are the looks which appal—the blows which destroy?
Where is the unbroken chain—the insatiable vulture? Where are the
Cyclopes who forge the lightning, and the poets who forge the Cyclopes?
Alas! Jupiter, amidst all thy terrors, in heaven or on Ida, in feasting or in
wrath, in poetry or in prose, thou wert a quack, Jupiter, a most contemptible
quack; so utterly destitute of everything that could ensure respect; so
miserably deficient in everything that could inspire fear; such a pitiful
compound of ignorance and knowledge, of strength and imbecility, of
vanity and vice—that if the days of thy sovereignty could return again—if
thou couldst again be fed upon sacrifice and flattery, I swear by thine own
beard I would as soon be an Irus as a Jupiter.
The truth is that the religion of the ancients, as far as it can be collected
from their writings, partook in no small degree of predestination. Yet it is
enveloped in so much obscurity, that it is very difficult for us—nay, it might
have been very difficult for them—to define where the supremacy of fate
should stop and the authority of the gods commence. We find some
unfortunate divinity perpetually endeavouring to overthrow some State
which is destined to stand, or to destroy some hero who is destined to live;
although the said divinity has an innate perception that his struggles in
either instance must eventually be fruitless. I know that these ideas may be
said to be founded solely on the marvellous fictions of the poets; but, let me
ask, would Diomedes have ever inflicted a wound upon Mars, if Homer had
seen in Mars a formidable being? or would Juno have ever strutted and
stormed through the Æneid, if Virgil had cared a sixpence for her
displeasure? When I see these liberties taken with the gods in writing, I feel
convinced that equal liberties will be taken with them in life; when I find an
immortal and an invincible being knocked on the head or run through the
belly at the mercy of a terrestrial wit, I naturally conclude that in the
country where such a phenomenon takes place few persons will boggle at a
perjury from the apprehension of a thunder-bolt. But this is not all. There
seems to have existed an idea that a time was approaching when the great
offspring of Saturn would be hurled down from the seat he occupied, and
subjected to an ignominious destiny, if not to utter annihilation. This is one
of the most singular and unaccountable points in their system of faith.
Without going into discussions, to which I am unequal, upon the origin and
import of this notion, I must express my surprise at the blindness of those
who dressed up a figure loaded with all these debilities as their supreme
power, and installed him in the seat of universal dominion.
As I have been making allusions to the introduction of the gods in the
battles of the Epics, I shall proceed to say a few words upon the subject.
The worthy gentry of Olympus, resembling men in their vices, their
passions, their liability to pain, and their delight in carnage, made a very
tolerable figure in a fair stand-up fight. Their characters could suffer very
little from their making use of brazen arms, riding in wooden chariots, and
wrestling with antagonists of mere flesh and blood. Mars, to be sure, would
have done better if he had refrained from howling; and Juno would not have
lost in dignity if she had been a little more cautious in boxing the ears of
Diana. But, upon the whole, these people are very good matter for the poet;
and I would as lief meet them in an hexameter as in a temple.
But it is a very different thing when the person of the only true God is to
be introduced in a poem. A pigmy in poetry may trifle with the thunders of
Jupiter; but a Hercules should beware how he handles the terrors of
Jehovah. A rhymer may talk what nonsense he pleases of a mythology
which consists of fiction and tinsel; but he should be afraid to touch upon a
theme in which there is truth, and eternity, and power. It is for this reason
that I can never read without disgust those passages of Tasso in which the
divine agency is degraded to the level of the machinery of the poem.
When, however, the description falls into the hands of one who is able to
do justice to it, see how the glories of the heathen mythology sink before
the effulgence of the living God. Search the most celebrated descriptions of
heathen writers; and where, in the brightest moments of inspiration, will
you find a passage that can for a moment be compared with that of the
Psalmist?
“The earth trembled and quaked; the very foundations of the hills shook,
and were removed, because He was wrath. There went a smoke out in His
presence, and a consuming fire out of His mouth, so that coals were kindled
at it. He bowed the heavens also and came down, and it was dark under His
feet. He rode upon the cherubims and did fly: He came flying upon the
wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place; His pavilion round
about Him with dark water, and thick clouds to cover Him. At the
brightness of his presence His clouds removed; hailstones and coals of fire.
The Lord also thundered out of heaven, and the Highest gave His thunder;
hailstones and coals of fire. He sent out His arrows and scattered them; He
cast forth lightnings and destroyed them. The springs of waters were seen,
and the foundations of the round world were discovered, at Thy chiding, Ο
Lord, at the blasting of the breath of Thy displeasure.”
When I look at the famous nod of Jupiter—

Ἧ, καὶ κυανέησιν ἐπ’ ὀφρύσι νεῦσε Κρονίων,

Ἀμβρόσιαι δ’ ἄρα χαῖται ἐπεῥῤώσαντο ἄνακτος
Κρατὸς ἀπ’ ἀθανάτοιο· μέγαν δ’ ἐλέλιξεν Ὄλυμπον—

I have before me a distinct image of a handsome terrible-looking man,

sitting on a throne, and shaking his head; but when I read the passage which
I have quoted above, I find no clear image represented; I feel only a dark
and undefinable sensation of awe—a consciousness of the presence of the
Deity, visible, yet clothed with darkness as with a veil.
Look now at the terrible magnificence with which Ezekiel has
overshadowed the Almighty. After a gorgeous description of the attendant
ministers, he says—
 “And there was a voice from the firmament that was over their heads,
when they stood and had let down their wings. And above the firmament
that was over their heads, was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of
a sapphire stone, and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the
appearance of a man upon it. And I saw as the colour of amber, as the
appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins
even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as
it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the
appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the
appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the
likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face,
and I heard a voice of one that spake.”
My quotations are running to a great length; nevertheless I cannot refrain
from transcribing the splendid description of the Messiah, in which our own
Milton has united the above two passages:—
 Forth rushed with whirlwind sound
The chariot of Paternal Deity,
Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel withdrawn
Itself instinct with spirit, but convoyed
By four cherubick shapes; four faces each
Had wondrous; as with stars their bodies all
And wings were set with eyes, with eyes the wheels
Of beryl, and careering fires between;
Over their heads a crystal firmament,
Whereon a sapphire throne inlaid with pure
Amber, and colours of the showery arch.
He in celestial panoply all armed
Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought,
Ascended; at his right hand Victory
Sate eagle-winged; beside him hung his bow
And quiver, with three-bolted thunder stored;
And from about him fierce effusion rolled
Of smoke and bickering flame, and sparkles dire.
Attended with ten thousand thousand saints
He onward came; far off his coming shone;
And twenty thousand (I their number heard)
Chariots of God, half on each hand were seen.
He on the wings of cherub rode sublime,
On the crystalline sky in sapphire throned.

After having transcribed three such passages as these, I am in no mind to

return at present to the dirt and filth of Pagan superstition, and I shall hasten
to a conclusion.
I have been digressing from my original proposition, until at last I have
left the Divinities of the Ancients, and set to work at proving that Homer
and Virgil are far inferior to David, Ezekiel, and Milton, which after all is a
very easy task, and not very new. I intended to have made this a very
learned paper, to have talked much of Egypt, a little of M. Belzoni, and
several other matters which I have not time to enumerate. Here, however, is
the fruit of my labours; I am too lazy, or too busy, to alter, or add, or erase;
in thus rambling through five or six pages, instead of labouring through
fifty, my time has been expended, I am sure, more pleasantly to myself, and
I hope as agreeably to my readers.
 REMINISCENCES OF MY YOUTH.

“Admonitu locorum.”—Cicero.

It is the seventh day of my revisiting! The burst of almost painful affection

which came over me as I first trod upon the scene of brighter hours, and the
glow of heart and brow, which seemed like a resuscitation of feelings and
passions that have long lain dormant in forgetfulness—these have gradually
died away; but there has succeeded, dearest spot, a mellowed fondness for
you, which, were I to live an eternity with you, would remain through that
eternity imperishable. I now am delighted to muse upon the sweetness of
those recollections, whose overpowering throb I at first could hardly
endure; and love to call up before me those imaginings, which at first
rushed upon me with the overwhelming force of a cataract. I look around
me! A spirit seems to be sitting on every house-top, lingering in every
grove; incidents in themselves the most humble, objects in themselves the
most mean—like insects preserved in amber—derive nobility and beauty
from the colours which memory has thrown around them!
There are associations in the names and the aspects of places which it is
impossible for us to restrain or subdue. Who shall gaze upon the Capitol,
and not think upon the Cæsars? Who shall roam round Stonehenge, and not
shudder at the knife of the Druids? Who shall be a sojourner in Eastcheap,
and not enjoy sweet visions of Shakespeare? My native village! Less
celebrated are the worthies whose images you recall to my imagination, but
they are recalled in colours as constant and as vivid. How can I look upon
your sports, without thinking of those who were my companions when I
joined in them? How can I listen to the voice of your merriment, without
thinking of those from whom in other days it sprung?
Before me is the tavern! The lapse of years has hardly bored an
additional excavation in its dusky window-curtain, or borrowed a single
shade from the boards of its faded sign. But its inmates have vanished; their
laughter is no longer heard in their place; and the red-brick wall of the Ship
stands before me like the cemetery of their mirth, their wit, and their good-
humour. In my youth I was wild—blame me you that have never been so—
and I loved to mingle in this scene of rustic joviality, to listen to the remarks
of untutored simplicity, to envy those who had grown grey untainted by the
corruptions of “this great Babel,” and to feel how truly it was said,

Where ignorance is bliss,

’Tis folly to be wise.

Many years ago I looked upon these boyish pursuits with an eye very
different from that which is now cast back towards them. Many years ago, I
thought nothing disgraceful which was not incompatible with innocence in
myself and charity towards my fellow-creatures. What would you have? I
have grown more prudent, and I am not so happy.
The great room of this humble building was the curia of the village. In it
the patriarchs of the place held their nightly sittings, and discussed ale and
politics with unremitting assiduity. There was no inebriety, no tumult, no ill-
mannered brutality in their sessions; everything was conducted with the
greatest order and tranquillity; the old men assembled with all the gravity,
with all the earnestness, perhaps with much of the wisdom, of great
statesmen. Alas! ye profane ones, ye smile. Ye look with contempt upon my
rustic curia and my weather-beaten statesmen. And what are the great ones
of this earth? Shall not the beings of a more exalted sphere contemplate
with equal scorn the wranglings of more honoured senates? You turn with
disgust from the eloquence of a Huggins or a Muggins! Look ye then to the
oratory of a Cicero, to the patriotism of a Brutus, or, if you will, to the
commanding energies of a Pitt and a Fox! Years roll on, and—what are
they?
However, call it a curia, or a club, or what ye will, custom had
established in this mansion a meeting of all the wise heads and all the
choice spirits of the hamlet. At first the members of it were very
independent of all party considerations, and each was too conscious of his
own individual merits to become a hanger-on of any more important
potentate. Whatever subject was tabled, whether it were the Holy Alliance
or the Holy Church—the taste of the new tap or the conduct of the new
member—every one said what he thought, and had no idea of bowing to the
opinion of his neighbour. In process of time, however, this laudable spirit of
liberty and equality began, as in other places, to decline. Some of the
members became idle and complaisant, others waxed mighty and
overbearing; until at last the Parliament of—— became subservient to the
will and wishes of a single ruler, and Jeremiah Snaggs took his place in my
memorandum-book as the first Dictator.
He had lived many years in the place, so that he was well known to most
of its inhabitants—to some too well. He had long enjoyed the office of
collector of the taxes in—— and its neighbourhood, and had contrived to
grow rich, as some whispered not by the most creditable methods. However
that might be, he was rich, and, as the patriarchal simplicity of the spot
declined, many began to look with ill-concealed covetings upon the
possessions of Jeremiah Snaggs. He had built to himself a mansion by the
roadside, with a small garden in front; and there was a very extraordinary
appendage to it, which excited much speculation among his unsophisticated
contemporaries, and which he denominated a veranda. For some time he
remained shut up in his citadel, and seemed to contemn the courtesies and
repel the approaches of the inferior beings who moved around him.
Afterwards, however, he found the solitude of his home (for he was a
bachelor) insupportable; and he emerged gradually from his retirement, and
condescended to join in the social assemblies of his neighbours. He joined
them not as a fellow-citizen, but as a sovereign; he came among them, not
to brighten their festivity, but to chill their good-humour; his presence was
not an assistance, but a restraint. Nevertheless, he was the great man of the
place, and in a short time his word was law among its inhabitants. Whether
the ascendency was owing rather to the talents which he occasionally
displayed, or to the dinners which he occasionally gave, I cannot say.
Thomas the boatbuilder, who till now had the credit of being a staunch
Whig, and the boldness to avow it, drew in his horns; his patriotism, his
oratory, his zeal shrank into nothing before the fiat of the Tory bashaw. He
made indeed a violent opposition when Jeremiah proposed the introduction
of port wine in lieu of the malt which had hitherto been the inspiration of
their counsels, and he was somewhat refractory when the dictator insisted
upon turning out the seats of the last generation and introducing modern
chairs. But upon both points the boatbuilder was outvoted; and in obedience
to Mr. Snaggs the senators dozed upon nauseous port, and fidgeted upon
cane bottoms, for the space of six years. Look now! You smile at the
disputes of a Thomas and a Snaggs! Yet why? What is there of greater
moment in those of a Londonderry and a Brougham?
 A period, however, was soon put to this terrible system of misrule: an
old favourite of the hundred returned from fighting his country’s battles, in
which occupation he had been perseveringly engaged for the last fourteen
years. Sergeant Kerrick was disgusted with the innovations of the day, and
set vigorously to work to drive them before him, as he expressed himself, at
the point of the bayonet. The sergeant was always a fine man, but he was
now a cripple into the bargain; he had always majestic black eyes, but he
had now the additional advantage of having a cut over both; he had always
the two legs of Hercules, but now—glorious destiny!—he had only one to
stand upon. He was irresistible! The veranda, the roast mutton, the will—
all, all was forgotten. In a short time Snaggs was beat by unheard-of
majorities; a week—and the tide of Whitbread’s best was turned into its
proper channel; another—and the cane-bottoms were kicked ignominiously
from the Parliament. Thomas the boatbuilder, who had seceded in
disappointment, was brought back in triumph; the dictator in vain attempted
to check the progress of the revolution! baffled, defeated, insulted on all
sides, he retired from the field in dismay, and died within a week afterwards
from the falling of his veranda. His death produced no sensation; for it was
evident that the man of war had been already installed in his place.
The Sergeant bore his faculties right meekly, and promoted the
restoration of l’ancien régime to the utmost of his abilities. During his
administration people began to talk with some little degree of freedom,
although at first they were much awed by the laurels and the scars of their
president. They had a wondrous idea of the wisdom he had attained upon
his travels. How could they talk of politics in his presence? Why, gracious!
he had held the Emperor o’ Russia’s stirrup at Petersburg, and taken off his
hat to the Pope o’ Rome—ay! and caught a glimpse o’ Boney to boot. Then,
as to religious matters! why the Vicar was nothing to him: he had seen some
nations that pray cross-legged, and some that pray in the open air, and some
that don’t pray at all; and he had been to St. Peter’s, and a place they call
the Pantheon, and all among the convents and nunneries, where they shut
up young folk to make clergymen of them. It is not surprising that all this
condensation of knowledge produced much veneration in the
neighbourhood; it wore off, however, rapidly, and his companions began to
enjoy the tales of his hardships, his privations, his battles, and his triumphs,
without any feeling of distance or dissatisfaction. Enchanted by the stories
he told, enchanted still more by the enthusiasm with which he told them, the
Patres Conscripti began to despise their hitherto pacific habits; they carried
their sticks on their shoulders, instead of trailing them on the ground; they
longed

To follow to the field some warlike lord;

all of them began to look big, and one or two made some proficiency in
swearing. By the edict of the dictator, the Biblical prints which were ranged
round the chamber made room for coloured representations of Cressy and
Agincourt; and the table was moved into such a situation as to give
sufficient room for the manual exercise. The women of the village began to
be frightened; Matthew Lock, a fine young man of eighteen, ran away to be
listed; Mark Fender, a fine old man of eighty, lost an eye in learning parry
tierce; two able-bodied artisans caught an ague by counter-marching in a
shower; apprehensions of a military government began to be pretty general
—when suddenly the dictator was taken off by an apoplexy. Ibi omnis
effusus labor! He died when the organization of the corps was just
completed; he was carried to his final quarters in great state, and three
pistols and a blunderbuss were fired over his grave. Why should we
contemn his lowly sepulchre? He died—and so did Alexander.
The warlike Tullus was succeeded by the pacific Numa. Kerrick, the
sergeant, was succeeded by Nicholas, the clerk. The six months during
which the progeny of Mars had held the reins of government, had unsettled
everything; the six weeks which saw Nicholas in his stead set everything in
its place again. In the course of a few days it was discovered that drab was a
better colour than red, and that an oyster-knife was a prettier weapon than a
bayonet. In this short reign the magnates of the place imbibed a strong taste
for literature and the arts. The blunderbuss was exchanged for the
“Pilgrim’s Progress,” and one of the pistols for the “Whole Duty of Man.”
Nicholas himself was a man of considerable acquirements; he was the best
reader in the place next to the Vicar, and by dint of much scraping and
perseverance he had managed to fill two shelves with a heterogeneous
confusion of ancient and modern lore. There was an odd volume of the
“History of England,” sundry ditto of sermons, an account of “Anson’s
Voyage Round the World,” and “The righte Pathe toe Welle-Doinge,” by
Geoffry Mixon. There was also a sage treatise on Ghosts, Spectres,
Apparitions, &c., which instigated me to various acts of atrocity, to which I
shall presently allude.
Nicholas had presided over the conclave for four months in
uninterrupted tranquillity, when an incident occurred which put the firmness
of his character to the test. The Parliament had just finished their second jug
one evening, and were beginning to think of an adjournment, when a low
rumbling noise, like the echo of distant thunder, was heard, and in a
moment afterwards the door, as it were spontaneously, flew open, and a
spectre flew in. It is needless for me to describe the spectre: it was, selon
règle, above the common height, with pale cheeks, hollow voice, and
staring eyes. It advanced to the dictator’s chair, and moaned, in an audible
murmur, “I am thine evil genius, Nicholas! Thou shalt see me at church on
Sunday.” And then it immediately vanished, nobody knew how or where.
Well indeed it might, for few of the company were qualified to play the spy
on its motions. The clerk, however, is said to have kept his seat with great
firmness; and all avowed that they had followed his example. Howbeit,
unless my memory fails me, there was a whisper that the saddler contrived
to be looking under the table for a sixpence, and the exciseman’s sooty
appearance told dirty tales of the chimney. The clerk was much importuned
not to hazard himself in the church upon the fated Sabbath; but upon this
point he was obstinate: it was finally agreed to conceal the matter, and in
the event of the apparition’s reappearance to set the minister at him.
On the Sunday (for I suppose the reader is aware that I was intimately
acquainted with the causes of the alarm) it was very amusing to watch the
different faces of terror or expectation which appeared at public worship, to
mark the quivering hue on the sallow cheek of the exciseman, and listen to
the querulous intonation of the clerk’s Amen. When at last the sermon was
concluded, Nicholas gave his final twang in such a manner that to my ears it
resembled an Io pæan. He rose from his knees with a countenance of such
unmingled, unrepressed triumph, that I could no longer restrain myself! I
laughed. Alas! dearly did I rue, unhappy wight, that freak of sacrilegious
jocularity.
“And is this all!” See now; you laugh at this deception because a foolish
boy was its instrument, and an honest clerk its victim. Have you not often
pored, with romantic interest, upon tales of impostures equally gross? Have
you not read with horror the celebrated warning of Dion? Have you not
shuddered at, “I am thine evil spirit, Brutus; thou shalt see me again at
Philippi?” and yet

What’s in a name?
“Nicholas” will raise a spirit as well as “Brutus.”

The dictator’s seat was soon after vacated. Ellen, the Vicar’s daughter,
had died some years before; and her father, finding himself unable to
reconcile himself to the residence which she had so long endeared to him,
prepared to quit the village. It was supposed that poor Nicholas was
overpowered by the misfortune of his patron: certain it is that he died very
quietly one fine summer’s evening, quite prepared for his end, and in the
fullest possession of his faculties. He was followed to his grave by as
sincere a crowd of mourners as ever wept at a poor man’s obsequies. There
is no urn, no column, no monumental splendour where he sleeps! But what
of this? Nicholas is dust—and so is Cheops.
One more name lives in my recollection. The old clerk bequeathed his
library and his authority to his favourite, Arthur. Arthur!—he had no other
name. That of his father was unknown to him, and he was taken from life
before his merits had earned one. He was a foundling. He had been left at
the old clerk’s door some years before I was born; and Nicholas had
relieved the parish of the expense, and had educated him with all the
attention of a father. I will not relate the whisper which went about at the
time, nor the whispers which succeeded afterwards. Arthur grew in health
and beauty, and was quite the pet of the neighbourhood; he had talents too,
which seemed designed for brighter days; and patience, which made even
his bitter lot endurable. He used to write verses which were the admiration
of the synod; and sang his hearers to sleep occasionally with all the good-
nature imaginable. At last a critic of distinguished note, who was spending
a few months near the hamlet, happened to get a sight of the boy’s poetry,
and took a fancy to him. He taught him to read and recite with feeling;
pointed out to him the beauties and the errors of the models which he put
into his hands; and, on his departure, gave him the works of several of our
modern worthies, and promised that he would not forget him. However he
did forget him, or gave no symptoms of his remembrance.
The old clerk died, and Arthur felt alone in the world. Still he had many
friends; and when the first burst of his regret was over, comfortable