TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE.
Some pages of this work have been moved from the original sequence to enablethe contents to continue without interruption. The page numbering remains unaltered.
Only references within this volume have been linked. A complete Index will be found in the Fourth Volume.
The book cover has been created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
MR. PUNCH'S HISTORY
OF MODERN ENGLAND
THE RECONCILIATION:
OR, AS IT OUGHT TO BE
Reproduced from the cartoon in Punch, 15th March, 1845.
MR. Punch's History
of Modern England
By
CHARLES L. GRAVES
In Four Volumes
VOL. I.—1841-1857
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1921
Published by arrangement with the Proprietors of "Punch"
PREFACE
The title of this work indicates at once its main source and itslimitations. The files of Punch have been generally admitted to be avaluable mine of information on the manners, customs, and fashions ofthe Victorian age, and of the wealth of material thus provided liberaluse has been made. But it must not be forgotten that Punch has alwaysbeen a London paper, and that in so far as English life is reflected inhis pages, London always comes first, though in this volume, andespecially during the "Hungry 'Forties," Lancashire comes a very goodsecond. For pictures of provincial society—such, for example, as thatgiven in Cranford or in the novels of Trollope—or of life inEdinburgh or Dublin, the chronicler of Victorian England must lookoutside Punch. The "country cousin" is not forgotten, but for the mostpart comes into view when he is on a visit to London, not when he is onhis native heath. Yet even with these deductions the amount of materialis embarrassingly rich. And this is due not only to the multiplicity ofsubjects treated, but to the manner in which they were discussed. OfPunch, in his early days at any rate, the criticism recently appliedto Victorian writers in general by a writer in Blackwood holds good:"They had a great deal to say, and they said it sometimes in too loud avoice. Such was their virtue, to which their vice was akin. Their vicewas the vice of rhetoric. They fell to the temptation of many words.They wrote too often as the tub-thumper speaks, without muchself-criticism and with a too fervent desire to be heard immediately andat all costs." In the '