AVOXDEKS OF SCIENCE. 



3. The rapid circulation of intelligence was also the boast of 

 those times. How foreigners stared when told that the news oi 

 each afternoon formed a topic of conversation at tea-tables the 

 same evening, twenty miles from London, and that the morning 

 journals, still damp from the press, were served at breakfast 

 within a radius of thirty miles, as early as the frequenters of the 

 London clubs received them. 



Now let us imagine that some profound thinker, deeply versed 

 in the resources of Science at that epoch, were to have gravely 

 predicted that the generation existing then and there would live 

 to see all these admirable performances become obsolete, and 

 consigned to the history of the past ; that they would live to regard 

 such vehicles as the "Age " and " Defiance " as clumsy expedients, 

 and their celerity such as to satisfy those alone who were in a 

 ba?kward state of civilisation ! 



4. Let us imagine that such a person were to affirm that his 

 contemporaries would live to see a coach like the j Defiance," 

 making its trip between London and Exeter, not in thirty, but in 

 five hours, and drawn, not by 200 blood-horses, but by a moderate 

 sized stove and four bushels of coals ! 



5. Let us further imagine the same sagacious individual to 

 predict that his contemporaries would live to see a building 

 erected in the centre of London, in the cellars of which machinery 

 would be provided for the fabrication of artificial lightning, which 

 should be supplied to order, at a fixed price, in any quantity 

 required, and of any prescribed force ; that conductors would be 

 carried from this building to all parts of tha country, along which 

 such lightning should be sent at will; that in the attics of this 

 same building would be provided certain small instruments like 

 barrel-organs or pianofortes ; that by means of these instruments, 

 the aforesaid lightning should, at the will and pleasure of those 

 in charge of them, deliver messages at any part of Europe, from 

 St. Petersburgh to Naples ; and, in fine, that answers to such mes- 

 sages should be received instantaneously, and by like means : 

 that in this same building offices should be provided, where any 

 lady or gentleman might enter, at any hour, and for a few 

 shillings send a message by lightning to Paris or Yienna, and by 

 waiting for a few moments, receive an answer ! 



Might he not exclaim after the inspired author of the book of 

 Job: 



" Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto 

 thee, Here we are " ! ! xxxviii., 35. 



But, suppose that his foresight should further enable him to 

 pronounce that means would be invented by which any individual 

 in any one town or city of Europe should be enabled to take in 



1 2 115 



