understand what it is to be hampered in their movements and their
correspondence as were their fathers, they must seek the remoter and
more savage quarters of Europe, the less travelled portions of
America or of half-explored Australia; they must plunge into Asian or
African wilds, untouched by civilisation, where as yet there runs not
the iron horse, worker of greater marvels than the wizard steeds of
fairy fable, that could, transport a single favoured rider over wide
distances in little time. The subjugated, serviceable nature-power
Steam, with its fellow-servant the tamed and tutored Lightning, has
wonderfully contracted distance during these fifty years, making the
earth, once so vast to human imagination, appear as a globe shrunken
to a tenth of its ancient size, and bringing nations divided by half
the surface of that globe almost within sound of each other's speech.

[Illustration: Wheatstone.]

That there is damage as well as profit in all these increased
facilities of intercourse must be apparent, since there is evil as
well as good in the human world, and increased freedom of
communication implies freer communication of the evil as of the good.
But we may well hope that the cause of true upward progress will be
most served by the vast inevitable changes which, as they draw all
peoples nearer together, must deepen and strengthen the sense of
human brotherhood, and, as they bring the deeds of all within the
knowledge of all, must consume by an intolerable blaze of light the
once secret iniquities and oppressions abhorrent to the universal
conscience of mankind. The public conscience in these realms at least
is better informed and more sensitive than it was in the year of
William IV's death and of Victoria's accession.