"TJRUTH AT THE BOTTOM OF A" MAKL-PIT. 79 



and pack-saddles, what would you have said to 

 that Mail-Train that was flying like a meteor 

 through the night, upon its track of polished iron, 

 pome seven or eight miles away ; annihilating 

 DISTANCE, yet leaving SPACE undiminished ; turning 

 the wide-spread country abodes of men into one 

 vast Metropolis of human Society, Mutuality, and 

 Intelligence not choked and deadened by long 

 rows of brick-and-mortar, like the dull, changeless, 

 man-manufactured Town, but open, and free, and 

 independent as ever, with earth, and air, and sky 

 unpolluted, undesecrated by the Throng; yet man 

 united by the closest intercourse and sympathy with 

 the marts of aggregated skill and progress in each 

 Art and Science that instructs, enriches, or ennobles.* 

 Despise not the Town, O man of gaiters, cordu- 

 roys, and short-cut-away, whose face is stereotyped 

 into perpetual jollity by JSTature's wholesome merry 

 hand, whose talk is of Swedes, Superphosphate, 

 and Ked Lammas ; nor do thou despise the coun- 

 try, O frock-coated, sleek-hatted, umbrella'd Town- 

 denizen, whose face is blanched and thoughtful, 



* An eloquent tributo to the value of railroads to agricul- 

 ture, which, unquestionably, is as much benefited by them 

 as any other industrial interest whatever. ED. 



