er counties (1888) made England one of the
most democratic of all nations. Her monarch has less power than the
president of the United States.

The Victorian age saw the rise of trades unions and the passing of
many laws to improve the condition of the working classes. As the
tariff protecting the home grower of wheat had raised the price of
bread and caused much suffering to the poor, England not only repealed
this duty (1846) but also became practically a free-trade country. The
age won laurels in providing more educational facilities for all, in
abridging class privileges, and in showing increasing recognition of
human rights, without a bloody revolution such as took place in
France. A rough indication of the amount of social and moral progress
is the decrease in the number of convicts in England, from about
50,000 at the accession of Victoria to less than 6000 at her death.

An Age of Science and Invention.--In the extent and the variety of
inventions, in their rapid improvement and utilization for human
needs, and in general scientific progress, the sixty-three years of
the Victorian age surpassed all the rest of historic time.

When Victoria ascended the throne, the stage coach was the common
means of traveling; only two short pieces of railroad had been
constructed; the electric telegraph had not been developed; few
steamships had crossed the Atlantic. The modern use of the telephone
would then have seemed as improbable as the wildest Arabian Nights'
tale. Before her reign ended, the railroad, the telegraph, the
steamship, and the telephone had wrought an almost magical change in
travel and in communication.

The Victorian age introduced anaesthetics and antiseptic surgery,
developed photography, the sciences of chemistry and physics, of
biology and zooelogy, of botany and geology. The enthusiastic
scientific worker appeared in every field, endeavoring to understand
the laws of nature and to apply them in the service of man. Science
also turned its attention to human progress and welfare. The new
science of sociology had earnest students.

[Illustration: CHARLES DARWIN.]

The Influence of Science on Literature.--The Victorian age was the
first to set forth clearly the evolution hypothesis, which teaches the
orderly development from simple to complex forms. While the idea of
evolution had suggested itself to many naturalists, Charles Darwin
(1809-1882) was the first to gain a wide hearing for the theory. A