CHAPTER II
INSTITUTIONS
Since institutions are satirized by those who take an interest
in public affairs, without being too well satisfied
with the way they are managed, we may expect to find
them conspicuously under indictment at this time. The
Victorians were notably a public-spirited group, and left
no cranny unpenetrated by their critical searchlight; for
it was the lamp they used, and not the hammer. The two
most striking features of nineteenth century public satire
are its ubiquity and its moderation. In all departments
it was zealous for reform; in none did it see the need of
sweeping abolishment. It emanated from a generation
poised waveringly between acquiescence and iconoclasm,
but avoiding both extremes. Awake to the blindness and
blundering of the past, it was still too rooted in piety and
tradition to visualize a future radically different. Strong
remedies, falling short of the drastic and destructive,
seemed about the right prescription. Dudley Sowerby is
Victorianism incarnate:[1]
"* * * he had been educated in his family to believe,
that the laws governing human institutions are divine—until
History has altered them. They are altered, to present a fresh
bulwark against the infidel."
The Victorians deplored, for instance, the domestic disaster
that inevitably follows the mercenary marriage
encouraged by Society, but they no more questioned the
- ↑ One of Our Conquerors, 267.
