ABSTRACT
We can only truly appreciate Layard's work when we place it against the background of his own intellectual and religious world, the contemporary England to whom he addressed his book. Great changes had taken place since he left the country in 1839. England in the high Victorian age now appears to most people as marked by a smug, self-righteous bourgeois respectability that was characterised by a placid acceptance of narrow moral norms and rules, but just below the tasselled surface lurked strong conflicts. Uncertainty and change was not only characteristic of social and political life; the cultural and religious debates reflected a deep convulsion in the traditional patterns. The intensity involved in these controversies was partly due to the fact that orthodox religious circles had a very solid and determined grip on the power in the country.
