THE VICTORIAN AGE.

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 40, 15 August 1918, Page 2

THE VICTORIAN AGE.

Mr. Asquith, in the Romanes Lecture at Oxford":

"The only Sovereigns who had given their'name to an epoiji had been reigning Queens—Elizabeth, Anne, and Victoria. For generations to come historians will speak of the Victorian Age. Outwardly, tie middle-class of the time moved in uninspiring surroundings; within, the growing pains of democracy wore hardly beginning to be felt. Though not so insular in our habits of mind and feeling as sometimes represented, we meet from time to time genuine sympathy with what one of our great orators has once described as nationalities 'rightly struggling to be free.' We were no knights-errant, but concentrated our energy and attention upon the attainment of the commercial and financial primacy of the world. It took a.long, time to make us realise that they might be paying too high, a, price in capturing the markets of the world under a system of industry which crippled and stunted the women and children of the country. Tho Victorians used to discuss who were the greatest writers of their time, but comparisons of that kind, if not futile, wero at least unprofitable. Men and women of the greatest genius could not be labelled and classified like plants or politicians. (Laughter.) Man's physical pedigree, whatever it be, must' be regarded as of little moment. Whether his origin was by special creation or by development from lower forms of organic life, somewhere and somehow he was united with something that was to be found nowhere else, in power of initiative, in self-determination, in pursuing and achieving ideals, and in the capacity for communal life. The last word here is not with philosophers, nor evenwith men of science, but with the poet who had the gift of vision:'

" 'What a piece of work is man! Hownoble in reason; how infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel; in apprehension how like a" god! The beauty of the world ! The paragon of animals!'

"I only hope that fifty years hence in this chair my successor will be able to say that the contribution, of the post-Victcri-jas was comparable with that of the Victorians in the things that permanently enrich and exalt mankind." (Cheers.)