Unit 4: Selection Vocabulary 1

To remedy these and the various evils connected with the system in general, and to render it as far as possible what it ought to be, an advantage to the labouring classes of the community; or at least to mitigate the rigours endured by the Children, a Bill has been introduced into Parliament to limit the hours of labour to twelve, for five days in the week, and ten on the Saturdays, including proper times for meals...

The Children being promiscuously herded together in large companies, and of both sexes, is calculated to promote immorality and licentiousness in general, especially so late at night.

Being so little with their Parents, they are under less control; their conduct cannot be watched by them, and there is no check to their evil propensities and sinful courses.

Suns shine, and flowers bloom, and forests wave, and streams run glittering in the light, in vain for the tens of thousands of British Children condemned to the incessant labors of the Factory.

...and let there be amongst the sympathising youth, a “Factory Child’s Box” in every house—thus shall we assist those who have undertaken the Children’s cause, and secure to ourselves the blessings of those who are ready to perish.

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their looks are sad to see,
For the man's grief abhorrent, draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy

And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in
The shroud, by the kirk-chime!

Let them feel that this cold metallic motion
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals

And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)
Strangers speaking at the door:
Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him,
Hears our weeping any more?

"How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation,
Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,—
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?

While this story is believed to be apocryphal, the tale captures the immense popularity and cultural importance that novels assumed in the Victorian era.

Dickens himself was fond of reading aloud and altered his writing to accommodate oral reading, including making dialogue sound more natural, using phonetic spellings to demonstrate the dialects of different characters, and also using punctuation stylistically to increase the ease and enjoyment of reading aloud.

Some authors accused the company of having too much power, tantamount to censorship, since any book that was not in the Mudie’s catalog was much less likely to be read.

Mudie’s often chose to publish content that would appeal to a middle-class family, and followed Victorian mores of preferring a moral message in the narrative.

Yet, the Victorian novel was not a monolithic form. Publishers experimented with varied genres and formats, and there were many different ways that novels could be read and experienced.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness...in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it.

It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution.

It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution.

In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen...