摘要：In 1897, during his visit to London celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne, Mark Twain observed, ‘British history is two thousand years old and yet in a good many ways the world has moved farther ahead since the Queen was born than it moved in all the rest of the two thousand put together.’1Twain's remark captures the sense of dizzying change that characterized nineteenth century Britain. Several radical changes took place. The shift from a land based economy to a modern urban economy based on trade and manufacturing was the most important aspect of the nineteenth century. By the beginning of the Victorian period, the Industrial Revolution had already brought about profound economic and social changes, including a mass migration of workers to industrial towns where they lived in new urban slums. The extension of the franchise resulted in widespread democratization. The century was also affected by challenges to the established religious faith. There was rapid advancement of scientific knowledge and progress was marked in all spheres of life.
