Victorian Worthies | Page 3

side of our human nature.
There are many whose sympathies will always be drawn rather to the
influence of man upon man than to the extension of man's power over
nature, to the development of character rather than of knowledge.
To-day literature must approach science, her all-powerful sister, with
humility, and crave indulgence for those who still wish to follow in the
track where Plutarch led the way, to read of human infirmity as well as
of human power, not to scorn anecdotes or even comparisons which
illustrate the qualities by which service can be rendered to the State.
To return to the nineteenth century, some would find a guiding thread
in the progress of the Utilitarian School, which based its teaching on
the idea of pursuing the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the

school which produced philosophers like Bentham and J. S. Mill, and
politicians like Cobden and Morley. It was congenial to the English
mind to follow a line which seemed to lead with certainty to practical
results; and the industrial revolutions caused men at this time to look,
perhaps too much, to the material conditions of well-being. Along with
the discoveries that revolutionized industry, the eighteenth century had
bequeathed something more precious than material wealth. John
Wesley, the strongest personal influence of its latter half, had stirred the
spirit of conscious philanthropy and the desire to apply Christian
principles to the service of all mankind. Howard, Wilberforce, and
others directed this spirit into definite channels, and many of their
followers tinged with a warm religious glow the principles which, even
in agnostics like Mill, lent consistent nobility to a life of service. The
efforts which these men made, alone or banded into societies, to
enlarge the liberties of Englishmen and to distribute more fairly the
good things of life among them, were productive of much benefit to the
age.
Under such leadership indeed as that of Bentham and Wilberforce, the
Victorian Age might have been expected to follow a steady course of
beneficence which would have drawn all the nobler spirits of the new
generation into its main current. Clear, logical, and persuasive, the
Utilitarians seemed likely to command success in Parliament, in the
pulpit, and in the press. But the criterion of happiness, however widely
diffused (and that it had not gone far in 1837 Disraeli's Sybil will attest),
was not enough to satisfy the ardent idealism that blazed in the breasts
of men stirred by revolutions and the new birth of Christian zeal. In
contrast to the ordered pursuit of reform, the spirit of which the
Utilitarians hoped to embody in societies and Acts of Parliament, were
the rebellious impulses of men filled with a prophetic spirit, walking in
obedience to an inward voice, eager to cry aloud their message to a
generation wrapped in prosperity and self-contentment. They formed
no single school and followed no single line. In a few cases we may
observe the relation of master and pupil, as between Carlyle and Ruskin;
in more we can see a small band of friends like the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, the leaders of the Oxford Movement, or the scientific
circle of Darwin and Hooker, working in fellowship for a common end.

But individuality is their note. They sprang often from surroundings
most alien to their genius; they wandered far from the courses which
their birth seemed to prescribe; the spirit caught them and they went
forth to the fray.
The time in which they grew up was calculated to mould characters of
strength. Self-control and self-denial had been needed in the protracted
wars with France. Self-reliance had been learnt in the hard school of
adversity. Imagination was quickened by the heroism of the struggle
which had ended in the final victory of our arms. And to the
generations born in the early days of the nineteenth century lay open
fields wider than were offered to human activity in any other age of the
world's history. Now at last the full fruits of sixteenth-century
discovery were to be reaped. It was possible for Gordon, by the
personal ascendancy which he owed to his single-minded faith, to
create legends and to work miracles in Asia and in Africa; for Richard
Burton to gain an intimate knowledge of Islam in its holiest shrines; for
Livingstone, Hannington, and other martyrs to the Faith to breathe their
last in the tropics; for Franklin, dying, as Scott died nearly seventy
years later, in the cause of Science, to hallow the polar regions for the
Anglo-Saxon race. Darkest Africa was to remain impenetrable yet
awhile. Only towards the end of the century, when Stanley's work was
finished, could Rhodes and Kitchener conspire to clasp hands across its
deserts and its swamps: but on the other side of the globe a new
island-empire had