"Yes, sir," said Rogers.




THE DOOM OF LONDON.


I.--THE SELF-CONCEIT OF THE 20TH CENTURY.

I trust I am thankful my life has been spared until I have seen that
most brilliant epoch of the world's history--the middle of the 20th
century. It would be useless for any man to disparage the vast
achievements of the past fifty years, and if I venture to call
attention to the fact, now apparently forgotten, that the people of the
19th century succeeded in accomplishing many notable things, it must
not be imagined that I intend thereby to discount in any measure the
marvellous inventions of the present age. Men have always been somewhat
prone to look with a certain condescension upon those who lived fifty
or a hundred years before them. This seems to me the especial weakness
of the present age; a feeling of national self-conceit, which, when it
exists, should at least be kept as much in the background as possible.
It will astonish many to know that such also was a failing of the
people of the 19th century. They imagined themselves living in an age
of progress, and while I am not foolish enough to attempt to prove that
they did anything really worth recording, yet it must be admitted by
any unprejudiced man of research that their inventions were at least
stepping-stones to those of to-day. Although the telephone and
telegraph, and all other electrical appliances, are now to be found
only in our national museums, or in the private collections of those