1. Democracy : Amid the multitude of social and political forces of this great age, four things stemd out clearly. First the long struggle of the Anglo-Saxons for personal liberty is definitely settled and democracy becomes the established order of the day. The king who appeared in an age of popular weakness and ignorance, and the peers who came with the Normans in triumph are both stripped of their power and left as figure-heads of a past civilization. The last vestige of personal government and the divine right of rulers disappears; the house of commons becomes the ruling power in England; and a series of new reforms bills rapidly extend the people choose for themselves the men who shall represent them.
2. Social Unrest : Second because it is an age of democracy, it is an age of popular education, of religious tolerance, of growing brotherhood, and of profound social unrest. The slaves had been freed in 1833 but in the middle of the century England a work to the fact that slaves are not necessarily negroes, stolen in Africa to be sold like cattle in the market place, but that multitudes of men, women, and little children in the mines and factories were victims of a more terrible industrial and social slavery. To free this competitive method, has been the growing purpose of the Victorian age until the present day.
3. The ideal of Peace : Third, because it is an age of democracy and education, it is an age of comparative peace. England begins to think less of the pomp and false glitter of fighting and more of its moral evils, as the nation realizes that it is the common people who bear the burden and the sorrow and the poverty of war, while the privilege classes reap most of the financial and political rewards. Moreover, with the growth of trade and of friendly foreign relations, it becomes evident that the social equality for which England was contending at home belongs to the whole race of men that brother hood is universal, not insular that a question of justice is never settled by fighting and that war is generally unmitigated horror and bar barusm. Tennyson, who came of age when the great reform bill occupied attention, expresses the ideas of the liberals of his day who proposed to spread the gospel of peace. Till the war drum throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furled in the parliament of man the federation of the world.
4. Arts and sciences : Fourth, the Victorian age is especially remarkable because of its rapid progress in all the arts and sciences and in mechanical inventions. A glance at any record of the industrial achievements of the nineteenth century will show how vast the are and it is unnecessary to repeat here the list of the inventions, from spinning looms to steamboats, and from matches to electric lights. All these material things, as well as the growth of education have their influence upon the life of a people and it is inevitable that they should react upon its prose and poetry thought as yet we are too much absorbed in our sciences and machines to determine accurately their influence upon literature. When these new things shall by long use have become familiar as country roads or have been replaced by newer and better things, then they also will have their associations and memories and a poem on the rail roads may be as suggestive as words worth’s sonnet on Westminster bridge and the busy, practical working men who today throng our stress and factories may seem to a future and greater age as quaint and poetical as to us seem the slow toilers of the middle ages.

 

 

 

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