IT is, or lately was, the fashion, among the young writers of essays and journalistic paragraphs, to poke fun at the Victorian Age. This fashion came into vogue before the War, and, happily, it is going out, or will soon go. Those of us living who remember the glory and the magnificence of the Victorian Age are able without dishonesty or hypocrisy to think gently of its failures and imperfections, and to enjoy heartily the unending pageant of memory. Only, in that pleasant diversion, we find ourselves watching, now one group, now another, of the chief actors in the pageant. Above all, we find ourselves up against a question which is evaded by the young critics of the Age. What were the forces which went to the making of the Victorian Age?