Water-colour was in its infancy; wood-engraving was hardly yet a great profession; but the "Dirty Boy" had not yet taken a prize at Paris, nor had indecency become a fine art.

The French school had not demonstrated the startling distinction between the nude and the naked, nor had the English school dreamed nightmares of anatomical distortion.
Darwin's theories had been propagated, but had not yet been passed into law, and very few Romans had heard of them; still less had any one been found to assert that the real truth of these theories would be soon demonstrated retrogressively by the rapid degeneration of men into apes, while apes would hereafter have cause to congratulate themselves upon not having developed into men.

Many theories also were then enjoying vast popularity which have since fallen low in the popular estimation.

Prussia was still, in theory, a Power of the second class, and the empire of Louis Napoleon was supposed to possess elements of stability.

The great civil war in the United States had just been fought, and people still doubted whether the republic would hold together.