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2013年教育部考试中心考研英语模拟试题 阅读理解部分汇编 八、现代人对维多利亚时代的看法 One of the silliest things in our recent history was the use of Victorian as a term of contempt or abuse. It had been made fashionable by Lytton Strachey with his clever, superficial and ultimately empty book Eminent Victorians, in which he damned with faint praise such Victorian heroes as General Gordon and Florence Nightingale. Stracheys demolition job was clever because it ridiculed the Victorians for exactly those qualities on which they prided themselvestheir high mindedness, their marked moral intensity, their desire to improve the human condition and their confidence that they had done so. Yet one saw, even before the 100th anniversary of the death of Queen Victoria this year, that there were signs these sneering attitudes were beginning to change. Programmes on radio and television about Victoria and the age that was named after her managed to humble themselves only about half the time. People were beginning to realize that there was something heroic about that epoch and, perhaps, to fear that the Victorian age was the last age of greatness for this country. Now a new book, What The Victorians Did For Us, aims further to redress the balance and remind us that, in most essentials, our own age is really an extension of what the Victorians created. You can start with the list of Victorian inventions. They were great lovers of gadgets from the smallest domestic ones to new ways of propelling ships throughout the far-flung Empire. In medicine, anaesthesia allowed surgeons much greater time in which to operateand hence to work on the inner organs of the bodynot to mention reducing the level of pain and fear of patients. | 
