ABSTRACT
The philanthropist, the reformer, the patient thrifty plodder are recognizable figures in the mid-Victorian scene. The mid-Victorians, despite their boasted attachments to domestic privacy, delighted in rushing into the courts or into print to air and demand redress for all sorts of domestic grievances; the public washing of dirty linen was one of the most popular of national recreations. The mid-Victorian class structure was both simpler and more rigid than ours. The mid-Victorian Sunday was no doubt a bundle of compromises and subject to all sorts of reservations and evasions but the religious feeling and the religious organizations of the country had been able to stamp a certain character on it. It is neither easy nor necessary to draw a hard-and-fast line between legal and social disciplines. The authority of a county justice, for instance, might derive as much from his social standing as from the powers annexed by law to his office.
