ELECTROMANIA. 653 



London and Birmingham Railway Station, displaying a first-class pas- 

 senger with a box-seat on the roof of the carriage, and followed by an 

 account of the trip to Boxmoor, the first installment of the London 

 and Northwestern Railway. It tells us that, "the time of starting 

 having arrived, the doors of the carriages are closed, and, by the assist- 

 ance of the conductors, the train is moved on a short distance toward 

 the first bridge, where it is met by an engine, which conducts it up 

 the inclined plane as far as Chalk Farm. Between the canal and this 

 spot stands the station-house for the engines ; here, also, are fixed the 

 engines which are to be employed in drawing the carriages up the 

 inclined plane from Euston Square, by a rope upward of a mile in 

 length, the cost of which was upward of 400." After describing 

 the next change of engines, in the same matter-of-course way as the 

 changing of stage-coach horses, the narrative proceeds to say that 

 " entering the tunnel from broad daylight to perfect darkness has an 

 exceedingly novel effect." 



I make these parallel quotations for the benefit of those who imag- 

 ine that electricity is making such vastly greater strides than other 

 sources of power. I well remember making this journey to Boxmoor, 

 and four or five years later traveling on a circular electro-magnetic 

 railway. Comparing that electric railway with those now exhibiting, 

 and comparing the Boxmoor trip with the present work of the London 

 and Northwestern Railway, I have no hesitation in affirming that the 

 rate of progress in electro-locomotion during the last forty years has 

 been far smaller than that of steam. 



The leading fallacy which is urging the electro-maniacs of the 

 present time to their ruinous investments is the idea that electro-mo- 

 tors are novelties, and that electric-lighting is in its infancy ; while 

 gas-lighting is regarded as an old or mature middle-aged business, 

 and therefore we are to expect a marvelous growth of the infant and 

 no further progress of the adult. These excited speculators do not 

 appear to be aware of the fact that electric-lighting is older than 

 gas-lighting ; that Sir Humphry Davy exhibited the electric light in 

 Albemarle Street, while London was still dimly lighted by oil-lamps, 

 and long before gas-lighting was attempted anywhere. The lamp 

 used by Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution, at the begin- 

 ning of the present century, was an arrangement of two carbon pen- 

 cils, between which was formed the " electric arc " by the intensely 

 vivid incandescence and combustion of the particles of carbon passing 

 between the solid carbon electrodes. The light exhibited by Davy 

 was incomparably more brilliant than anything that has been lately 

 shown either in London, or Paris, or at Sydenham. His arc was four 

 inches in length, the carbon pencils were four inches apart, and a broad, 

 dazzling arch of light bridged the whole space between. The modern 

 arc-lights are but pygmies, mere specs, compared with this, a leap of one 

 eighth or one quarter inch constituting their maximum achievement. 



