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 A Reconstruction of the Past

T has been said with some justice that we know more about the Victorian Period in England than we do of any one of the intervening nine centuries, even of those which lie closest to our own time, and even of such events as have taken place upon our own soil in the Malay Peninsula. I will attempt to put before you very briefly, as a sort of introduction to the series of lectures which I am to deliver, a picture of what one glimpse of life in London towards the end of the Nineteenth Century must have resembled.

"It is a sound rule in history to accept none but positive evidence and to depend especially upon the evidence of documents. I will not debate how far tradition should be admitted into the reconstruction of the past. It may contain elements of truth; it must contain elements of falsehood, and on that account I propose neither to deny nor to admit this species of information, but merely to ignore it; and I think the student will see before I have done with my subject that, using only the positive information before us, a picture may be drawn so fully detailed as almost to rival our experience of contemporary events. 90