MODES OP TRAVELLING. 



and as conveniently as could Englishmen down to the 

 latter part of the eighteenth century. It was mainly a 

 question of roads, and till the beginning of the nine- 

 teenth century our roads were for the most part far in- 

 ferior to those of the Romans. It is, therefore, not 

 improbable that during the Roman occupation of Brit- 

 ain the journey from London to York could have 

 been made actually quicker than a hundred and fifty 

 years ago. 



We see, then, that from the earliest historic, and even 

 in prehistoric times, till the construction of our great 

 railways in the second quarter of the present century, 

 there had been absolutely no change in the methods of 

 human locomotion; and the speed for long distances 

 must have been limited to ten or twelve miles an hour 

 even under the most favorable conditions, while gener- 

 ally it must have been very much less. But the railroad 

 and steam-locomotive, in less than fifty years, not only 

 raised the speed to fifty or sixty miles an hour, but ren- 

 dered it possible to carry many hundreds of passengers 

 at once with punctuality and safety for enormous dis- 

 tances, and with hardly any exposure or fatigue. For 

 the civilized world travelling and the conveyance of 

 goods have been revolutionized, and by means which 

 were probably neither anticipated nor even imagined 

 fifty years before. 



Dr. Erasmus Darwin, who predicted steam carriages, 

 had apparently no conception of the possibility of rail- 

 roads, the enormous cost of which would have seemed to 

 be prohibitory. And we have by no means yet fully 

 developed their possibilities, since even now a railroad 

 could be made on which we might safely travel more 



