Concerning the Age which has just passed, our
fathers and our grandfathers have poured forth and accumulated so
vast a quantity of information that the industry of a Ranke would
be submerged by it, and the perspicacity of a Gibbon would quail
before it. It is not by the direct method of a scrupulous
narration that the explorer of the past can hope to depict that
singular epoch. If he is wise, he will adopt a subtler strategy.
He will attack his subject in unexpected places; he will fall
upon the flank, or the rear; he will shoot a sudden, revealing
searchlight into obscure recesses, hitherto undivined. He will
row out over that great ocean of material, and lower down into
it, here and there, a little bucket, which will bring up to the
light of day some characteristic specimen, from those far depths,
to be examined with a careful curiosity. Guided by these
considerations, I have written the ensuing studies. I have
attempted, through the medium of biography, to present some
Victorian visions to the modern eye. They are, in one sense,
haphazard visions-- that is to say, my choice of subjects has
been
determined by no desire to construct a system or to prove a
theory, but by simple motives of convenience and of art. It has
been my purpose to illustrate rather than to explain. It would
have been futile to hope to tell even a precis of the truth about
the Victorian age, for the shortest precis must fill innumerable
volumes.
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