46 HER OES OF INVENTION AND DISCO VER Y. 



cally demonstrated with what hitherto almost undreamt-of 

 rapidity travelling by land may hereafter be carried on through 

 the aid of steam. Coaches, under the impetus communicated 

 by this, the most potent, and at the same time the most per- 

 fectly controllable of all our mechanical agencies, were destined 

 to be drawn forward at the flying speed of thirty and thirty-five 

 miles an-hour. When so much has been done already, it would 

 be rash to conclude that even this is to be our ultimate limit of 

 attainment In navigation, the resistance of the water, which 

 increases rapidly as the force opposed to it increases, very soon 

 sets bounds to the rate at which even the power of steam can 

 impel a vessel forward. But, on land, the thin medium of the air 

 presents no such insurmountable obstacle to a force making its 

 way through it ; and a rapidity of movement may perhaps be 

 eventually attained here, which is to us even as yet inconceivable. 

 But even when the rate of land travelling already shown to be 

 quite practicable shall have become universal in what a new 

 state of society shall we find ourselves ! When we are able to 

 travel a hundred miles in any direction in six or eight hours, into 

 what comparative neighbourhood will the remotest extremes 

 even of a large country be brought, and how little shall we 

 think of what we now call distance ! A nation will then be, 

 indeed, a community ; and all the benefits of the highest civili- 

 sation, instead of being confined to one central spot, will be 

 diffused equally over the land, like the light of heaven. This 

 improvement, in short, when fully consummated, confers upon 

 man nearly as much new power and new enjoyment as it he 

 were actually endowed with wings. 



It is gratifying to reflect that even while he was yet alive. 

 Watt received from the voice of the most illustrious of his 

 contemporaries the honours due to his genius. In 1785 he was 



