ABSTRACT
O N his honeymoon Walter Bagehot, the most urbane of Victorian economists, is said to have regaled his bride wi th a sermon by Frederick Denison Maurice, the most erudite of Anglican rationalists.1 And the lady's edification was no doubt quite as authentic as her husband's unquestionable sincerity. For the early and midVictorians were wonderfully concerned wi th religious controversy and ethical debate; and the reading of sermons was perhaps the most popular of their literary pastimes.2 But whatever their theological interests, their age was nonetheless in various ways devoted to the business of a material world which repeatedly denied the relevancy of their spiritual quest. For it was, as Jakob Burckhardt told his students at Basel, not at all remarkable that a generation given to metaphysical
dispute and moral dogmatizing should also indulge in "the most platitudinous round of life and money-making." 3
Though the poet or novelist aware of an engulfing materialism might urge the necessity of spiritual conversion, the absolute values towards which he aspired remained largely inaccessible to all who were bound by the relative standards of an industrial economy. The "practical" man, devoted to his own vision of success, had deliberately to resist a transcendental ethic. Whi le he found good sense in Carlyle's doctrine of hard work, he considered the doctrine of "selfannihilation" highly irrelevant to the fierce struggle which engaged his energies. Had he confessed more freely to his real motives, he might at least have been spared the charges of hypocrisy which have been turned wi th undue readiness against his whole generation. But he was often sufficiently touched by the selfless moralities of his prophet-teachers to feel the need of rationalizing his own daily conduct. A l l too frequently he sought some spiritual sanction for his roughshod material advance.
