The Virtuous Victorian
British navy for the development of domestic virtues. Until such time as Germany fulfils her threat, and drives the "bastard tongue of canting island pirates" from its hold on the civilized world, Tennyson's Ulysses will survive as the embodiment of the adventurous spirit which brooks no restraint, and heeds no liability.
The great Victorian novelists were well aware that, albeit the average man does his share of love-making, he neither lives nor dies for love. Mr. Edmund Gosse, reared in the strictest sect of Plymouth Brethren, and professing religion at ten, was nevertheless permitted by his father to read the novels of Dickens, because they dealt with the passion of love in a humorous manner. More often they deal with it in a purely perfunctory manner, recognizing it as a prelude to marriage, and as something to which the novelist must not forget to make an occasional reference. Nicholas
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