The
use of steam as a motive power, almost contemporaneous with the
Queen's reign, has bound our land in a network of railways: now it is
electricity which is being utilised in the same sense, and to the
telephone and the telegraph as means of verbal communication is added
the motorcar as a means of rapid progression, 1896 seeing its use in
streets sanctioned by Parliament. It may not yet supersede the
bicycle, which in ten years has greatly increased in favour. Electric
lighting, in the same period, has become very general; and further
adaptations of this mysterious force to man's service are in the air.
[Illustration: J. M. Barrie.]
[Illustration: Richard Jefferies.]
This is an age of great explorers. Stanley has succeeded to
Livingstone, Nansen to Franklin; but it has been only within
comparatively recent years that women have emulated men in
penetrating to remote regions. Within the decade we have seen Mrs.
Bishop a veteran traveller, visiting south-west Persia; Mrs. French
Sheldon has shown how far beyond the beaten track a woman's
adventurous spirit may lead her; and Miss Mary Kingsley, a niece of
the late Charles Kingsley, has intrepidly explored the interior of
Africa, her scientific observations being welcomed by British
_savants_.
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