ABSTRACT
The english people in the nineteenth century not Only achieved economic supremacy, world empire, and political democracy, but they created that formidable outlook called Victorianism. It was an outlook quite as important to their lives as universal suffrage or the marvels of industry It was complex—sometimes earnest, vigorous, sober, and elevated, at other times smug, complacent, indulgent, and vulgar; sometimes tolerant, individualistic, and honest, at other times dogmatic, conformist, and hypocritical. It could passionately pursue the heroic and the beautiful, or settle into materialism and philistinism. But though complex and many-sided, the outlook of educated Victorians contained a core of moral seriousness that distinguished them from their easygoing ancestors of the eighteenth century. No one could mistake William Gladstone for Sir Robert Walpole, nor Alfred Lord Tennyson for James Boswell.
