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ations regard natural history! In 1836, to study Sticklebacks 
seemed ludicrous! What an interesting account has been given 
of them by a well-known naturalist within the last few years, of the 
nests which they make, and of their habits of life generally! How 
much more have we learnt to watch and love the minutest details 
of God’s works in Nature ! 
Reading over again those two books, “ The Cloister and the 
Hearth,” and the “ Pickwick Papers,” it seems to me that (except 
for the great religious change of the Reformation) the world of 
1830 was more “ke the world of 7490 than of 1890, and that the 
last sixty years have wrought greater changes than the three 
centuries which went before: certainly no period of sixty years in 
the whole history of the world has seen so many. 
Take first this great fact, that railways have been practically the 
growth of the last sixty years. The small line from Stockton to 
Darlington began (I believe) about 1825; but the railway from 
Liverpool to Manchester was first opened in September, 1830, and 
at that time the communication between the north and south of 
England was still by the old stage coaches, travelling seven or 
eight miles an hour. These, of course, were chiefly for the 
wealthier classes, who wished to travel fast and could afford the 
expense. If the poor travelled at all, they went in wagons, and a 
journey which is now performed in a day, would take them two or 
three weeks. I well remember the weary length of a journey from 
London into Suffolk in the stuffy inside of a stage coach. And 
_ among the pleasanter memories of my childhood are the long 
drives from London to Brighton, or some other seaside place, or 
to a house in the country, sleeping at an inn on the road. It is 
_ difficult now to realize that, within the memory of some of us, 
Cumberland was practically farther from London than Rome or 
Madrid are now. I suppose, if I had been told then that my own 
__ later years were to be passed in Cumberland, it would have seemed 
to me a greater banishment than it does now to your own children 
if they have to go out and settle in Canada. And this tendency 
_ to draw together the different parts of the world seems to be 
increasing. How strange would have appeared, even twenty years 
