eed in 1833; but in the middle of the
century England awoke 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
these slaves also, the unwilling victims of our unnatural competitive
methods, has been the growing purpose of the Victorian Age until the
present day.

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 privileged 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
brotherhood is universal, not insular; that a question of justice is never
settled by fighting; and that war is generally unmitigated horror and
barbarism. Tennyson, who came of age when the great Reform Bill occupied
attention, expresses the ideals of the Liberals of his day who proposed to
spread the gospel of peace,

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furled
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the world.

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 they 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; though as
yet we are too much absorbed in our sciences and mechanics to determine
accurately their influence upon literature. When these new things shall by
long use have became familiar as country roads, or have been replaced by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 railroads may be as suggestive as Wordsworth's
so