These
days are well within the memory of many yet living; but if the newer
generations that have arisen during the present reign would
understand what it is to be hampered in their movements and their
correspondence as were their fathers, they must seek the remoter and
more savage quarters of Europe, the less travelled portions of
America or of half-explored Australia; they must plunge into Asian or
African wilds, untouched by civilisation, where as yet there runs not
the iron horse, worker of greater marvels than the wizard steeds of
fairy fable, that could, transport a single favoured rider over wide
distances in little time. The subjugated, serviceable nature-power
Steam, with its fellow-servant the tamed and tutored Lightning, has
wonderfully contracted distance during these fifty years, making the
earth, once so vast to human imagination, appear as a globe shrunken
to a tenth of its ancient size, and bringing nations divided by half
the surface of that globe almost within sound of each other's speech.
[Illustration: Wheatstone.]
That there is damage as well as profit in all these increased
facilities of intercourse must be apparent, since there is evil as
well as good in the human world, and increased freedom of
communication implies freer communication of the evil as of the good.
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