The World's Great Classics
Format: Paperback
ISBN13: 9780217618137
Paperback|9780217618137
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOOK IV.?MODERN LIFE CHAPTER FIRST IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS Section I.?Rise of Democracy ON the eve of the nineteenth century the great modern revolution began in Europe. The thinking public and the human mind changed, and whilst these changes took place a new literature sprang up. The preceding age had done its work. Perfect prose and classical style put within reach of the most backward and the dullest minds the notions of literature and the discoveries of science. Moderate monarchies and regular administrations had permitted the middle class to develop itself under the pompous aristocracy of the court, as useful plants may be seen snooting up beneath trees which serve for show and ornament. They multiply, grow, rise to the height of their rivals, envelop them in their luxuriant growth, and obscure them by their dense clusters. A new world, a world of citizens and plebeians, henceforth occupies the ground, attracts the gaze, imposes its form on manners, stamps its image on minds. Towards the close of the century a sudden concourse of extraordinary events brings it all at once to the light, and sets it on an eminence unknown to any previous age. With the grand applications of science, democracy appears. The steam-engine and spinning-jenny create in England towns of from three hundred and fifty thousand to five hundred thousand souls. The population is doubled in fifty years, and agriculture becomes so perfect that, in spite of this enormous increase of mouths to be fed. one-sixth of the inhabitants provide from the same soil food for the rest; importsincrease threefold, and even more; the tonnage of vessels increases sixfold, the exports sixfold and more.1 Comfort, leisure, instruction, reading, travel, whatever had been the privilege of a few, became the common prope...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217618137 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217618138 |
| Weight | 1.52 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 1.05 In |
| List Price | $25.69 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 472 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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