E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031472768 SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE A Survey of Court and Country by T. H. S. ESCOTT _Author of 'England, its People, Polity and Pursuits,' &c., &c._ New York Charles Scribner's Sons 153-157 Fifth Avenue 1897 _PREFACE_ It may be well very briefly to explain the relation in which the present work stands to a survey, not a history, of modern England undertaken by the same author some years ago. That earlier work was originally published by Messrs Cassell and Co. in two volumes. It was reprinted, first by them, secondly by Messrs Chapman and Hall, in a single volume. Into that re-issue of his _England: Its People, Polity, and Pursuits_ (the labour of revision being much lightened by the obliging help of Mr Francis Drummond), the author introduced certain references to social or legislative changes effected since the original edition of the work appeared. Without organic disturbance of its plan, and risk of consequent confusion to the reader, it would have been impossible to bring down that book to the year 1897. The writer does not in the following pages pre-suppose any knowledge of his former book on the part of the readers of his present one. He has, however, held himself absolved from the duty of repeating in this book minute accounts of institutions fully described in its predecessor. Such repetition seemed the more undesirable because the earlier book is still in wide circulation here; while it has been translated into several European languages, and has been adopted as a text book in the higher grade State schools of Germany,[1] and of other countries. The method of workmanship adopted in _Social Transformations of the Victorian Age_ is identical with that pursued in the case of _England, Etc._