It is really hard to mention these innovations on the old ways, so
vast and so sudden, without degenerating into rhetoric or bombast. The
spread-eagle style comes naturally to an epoch that soars on quick
new wing above all the others. We have it in all shapes--- equally
startling and true in figures of arithmetic or figures of speech. Any
school-boy can tell you, if you give him the dimensions of the Great
Pyramid and state thirty-three thousand pounds one foot high in a
minute as the conventional horse-power, how many hours it would take a
pony-team picked out of the hundreds of thousands of steam-engines on
the two continents to raise it. He will reduce to the same prosaic but
eloquent form a number of like problems illustrative of the command
obtained over some of the forces of Nature, and their employment
in multiplying and economizing manual strength and dexterity and
stimulating ingenuity. When we come to contemplate the whole edifice
of modern production, it seems to simplify itself into one new motor
applied to the old mechanical powers, which may perhaps in turn be
condensed into one--the inclined plane. This helps to the impression
that the structure is not only sure to be enlarged, as we see it
enlarging day by day, but to grow into novel and more striking
aspects. Additional motors will probably be discovered, or some we
already possess in embryo may be developed into greater availability.
These, operating on an ever-growing stock of material, will convince
our era that it is but introductory to a more magnificent and not far
distant future.

Magnificent the century is justified in styling its work. What matter
could do for mind and steam for the hand it has done. But is there
any gain in the eye and intellect which perceive, and the hand which
fixes, beauty and truth? Is there any addition to the simple lines, as
few and rudimental as the mechanical powers, which embody proportion