ABSTRACT
The work of Professor Walter L. Arnstein in the field of Victorian studies is very well known, not just to his professional colleagues but to generations of students as well. The politics, society, and economic life of the early Victorian era are particularly illuminated by such issues and events. It has spanned the political and social history of the nineteenth century in Britain, and much of it has concentrated on the religious and cultural history of the period. The early years of the 'age of improvement', we are reminded, involved much more than the high parliamentary politics of political and social reform. The significance of the use of political symbols, articulation of key issues, and performance of public political rituals in out-of-doors political life has in recent years become plain, and a good bit of what free-trade radicals did with respect to articulating support for education and moral improvement can be explained in these terms.
