RELATION TO COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE. 305 



The feeling of increased neighbourhood with the whole earth, which 

 has thus been startlingly brought before us, grows familiar and even 

 pleasant with every excursion we make. What a strange difference has 

 "ome over the meaning of the words, "a day's journey," as signifying 

 so much space traversed ! Think of the difference between even the 

 shortest "sabbath day's journey," as measured across the Egyptian 

 desert from the back of a camel, and the platform of a locomotive 

 engine ; or across the Atlantic from the deck of a packet, and the 

 paddle-box of an ocean steamer. We scarcely seem seated iu our express 

 trains, for what by miles is a long journey, when we are called on to 

 surrender our tickets ; and before we have time to forget the song to 

 which the sailors hove the anchor on one side of the world, the outlook 

 gazing on the other is heard shouting, " Land in sight." 



Our children may tire of swift progression, and cut the telegraph 

 wires and cables, that they may meditate in peace, and undisturbed by 

 news, realise the poet's " lodge in some vast wilderness." But for us 

 in our present eager mood, express trains are but lagging steeds, and the 

 failure of the Atlantic cable a bitter calamity. The seven league boots, 

 the shoes of swiftness, and Fortunatus' wishing cap, which, under the 

 names of steam-engine and telegraph, modern science has bestowed 

 upon practical art, must, although they had been but solitary gifts, have 

 altered all our commercial relations. The entire globe is now an open 

 market-place and bazaar for every nation, and trading must proceed in 

 a very different fashion from before. The great races of men will, 

 doubtless, continue to work at different rates and in different ways, and 

 we shall always probably be able to say of them, what Shakespeare's 

 Rosalind says of individuals, " I'll tell you who time ambles withal, 

 who time trots withal, who time gallops withal, and who he stands 

 still -withal." But steam-engines and telegraphs are plainly persuading 

 the whole world to keep in all senses the same time o'day, though what 

 that time shall be is still uncertain. I may be allowed, in passing, to in- 

 dulge the hope that our people will be content to go at the approved 

 national pace of the trot. We have not as yet learned to amble grace- 

 fully, and we cannot often afford to indulge, as w T e have recently been 

 doing, in the expensive luxury of a headlong gallop. But this by the way. 

 What I am earnest to urge as foremost in importance is, that the world 

 opened up so widely to us, and our long separated brethren brought 

 before us, face to face, could not but affect us strangeby, although 

 all that world were an African desert, and all its inhabitants wild 

 men practising rude aboriginal aits. Bat that world contains many 

 a people, as wise at least as ourselves, and their industry, as well as 

 ours, has been quickened by discoveries and inventions not less mar- 

 vellous than those which are embodied in the steam-engine and electric 

 telegraph. Within the period which divides ua from Waterloo, inclu- 

 ding, however, as organically connected with it, all the years of this 

 century, each of the older sciences has known a new birth, and on 

 vol. iv. c c 



