The Enemy of Mankind 



And of the ancient and beautiful towns 

 through which our journey takes us we see 

 nothing. 



How am I advantaged as a man, and as 

 one who loves his country, by getting to 

 Edinburgh from London in eight hours 

 having seen nothing, instead of getting there 

 in three or four days and seeing all the 

 loveliness of the countryside, the peasants 

 happily working in the fields, the sweet 

 unconscious beauty of the villages, the parks 

 and comely mansions with their stately gates 

 on the old high road, the venerable churches 

 with their ivy-covered rectories hard by, the 

 quaint red brick almshouses, founded ages 

 ago by pious benefactors, with their placid 

 old inmates sitting out in the sun, all 

 eloquent of the blessed repose of the quiet 

 life? 



And as with railways so it is with all the 

 trumpeted triumphs of Science, few indeed of 

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