LOCOMOTION BY RIVEE AND RAILWAY. 



their shipping. The increased activity of their internal communi- 

 cations is expounded by the number of their post-offices, which 

 has been increased more than a hundred fold ; the extent of their 

 post-roads, which has been increased thirty- two fold ; and the cost 

 of their post-office, which has been augmented in a seventy-two 

 fold ratio. The augmentation of the machinery of public instruc- 

 tion is indicated by the extent of their public libraries, which 

 have increased in a thirty- one fold ratio, and by the creation of 

 school libraries, amounting to 2,000,000 volumes. They have 

 completed a system of canal navigation, which, placed in a con- 

 tinuous line, would extend from London to Calcutta ; and a system 

 of railways which, continuously extended, would stretch from 

 London to Yan Diemen's Land, and have provided locomotive 

 machinery by which that distance would be travelled over in three 

 weeks, at the cost of ld. per mile. They have created a system 

 of inland navigation, the aggregate tonnage of which is probably 

 not inferior in amount to the collective inland tonnage of all the 

 other countries in the world ; and they possess many hundreds of 

 river steamers, which impart to the roads of water the marvellous 

 celerity of roads of iron. They have, in fine, constructed lines of 

 electric telegraph which, laid continuously, would extend over a 

 space longer by 3000 miles than the distance from the north to the 

 south pole, and have provided apparatus of transmission by which 

 a message of three hundred words despatched under such circum- 

 stances from the north pole might be delivered in writing at the 

 south pole in one minute, and by which, consequently, an answer 

 of equal length might be sent back to the north pole in an equal 

 interval. 



These are social and commercial phenomena for which it 

 would be vain to seek a parallel in the past history of the 

 human race.* 



* Lardner on the Great Exhibition, p. 251. 



