The passing age is acknowledged to be remarkable in various respects.
Great advances in matters of practical science; a vast development of
individual enterprise, and general prosperity;--at the same time,
strange retardations in things of social concern; a singular want of
earnestness in carrying out objects of undeniable utility. Much
grandeur, but also much meanness of conception; much wealth, but also
much poverty. A struggle between greatness and littleness;
intelligence and ignorance; light and darkness. Sometimes we feel as
if going forward, sometimes as if backward. One day, we seem as if
about to start a hundred years in advance; on the next, all is wrong
somewhere, and we feel as if hurriedly retreating to the eighteenth
century!
Upon the whole, however, we are ourselves inclined to look at the
bright side of affairs; and in doing so, we are not without hope of
being able to make some proselytes. Let us just see what are the
prospects of the next twenty years--a long enough space for a man to
look forward to in anything else than a dream. War, it is true, may
intervene, or some other terrible catastrophe; but we shall not admit
this into our hypothesis, which proceeds on the assumption, that
although people may wrangle here and there, and here and there fly at
each other's throats, still the bulk of civilised mankind will go on
tranquilly enough to present no direct barrier to the advancing tide.
Here is a list of a few trifles in expectation.
A line of communication by railway from England to the principal
cities in India, interrupted only by narrow sea-channels, and these
bridged by steamboats. It will then be possible to travel from London
to Calcutta in a week.
At the same time, there will be railways to other parts of
Asia--Ispahan, Bagdad, Damascus, and Jerusalem. From the
last-mentioned city, a line will probably proceed through the land of
Edom, to Suez and Cairo; thence to Alexandria. This last portion is
already in hand. Think of a railway station in the Valley of
Jehoshaphat! As the course of the Jordan presents few 'engineering
difficulties,' there might be a single line all the way from Nazareth
to the Dead Sea, on which a steamer might take passengers to the
neighbourhood of Petra. At a point near the shore of that mysterious
sheet of water, a late traveller indicates the spot where Lot's wife
was transformed into a pillar of salt. How interesting it would be to
make this a stopping-place for tourists to view the adjacent
scenery--rocky, wild, and scorched, as if fresh from the wondrous work
of devastation!
It cannot be doubted that in a period much short of twenty years,
railways will have penetrated from Berlin northwards to Russia; and
therefore a communication of this kind through the whole of Europe,
even to the shores of the Indian Ocean, will be among the ordinary
things of the day.
As for communication by electric telegraph, where will it not be?
Every town of any importance, from Moscow to Madras, will be connected
by the marvellous wires. These wires will cross seas; they will reach
from London to New York, and from New York to far-western
cities--possibly to California. The sending of messages thousands of
miles, in the twinkling of an eye, will be an everyday affair. 'Send
Dr So-and-so on by the next train,' will be the order despatched by a
family in Calcutta, when requiring medical assistance from London; and
accordingly the doctor will set off in his travels per express, from
the Thames to the banks of the Ganges. Spanning the globe by thought
will then be no longer a figure of speech--it will be a reality.
Science will do it all.
Long before twenty years--most likely in two or three--a journey round
the world by steam may be achieved with comparative ease and at no
great expense. Here is the way we shall go: London to Liverpool by
rail; Liverpool to Chagres by steamer; Chagres to Panama by rail;
Panama to Hong-Kong, touching at St Francisco; Hong-Kong to Sincapore,
whence, if you have a fancy, you can diverge to Borneo, Australia, and
New Zealand; Sincapore to Madras, Bombay, Aden, and Suez--the whole of
the run to this point from Panama being done by steamer; Suez to
Cairo, and Cairo to Alexandria (rail in preparation); lastly, by
steamer from Alexandria to England. It is deeply interesting to watch
the progress of intrusion on the Pacific. Already, within these few
years, its placid surface has been tracked with steam-navigation; of
which almost every day brings us accounts of the extension over that
beautiful ocean. Long secluded, by difficulty of access from Europe,
it is now in the course of being effectually opened up by the railway
across the Isthmus of Panama. And the grandeur of this invasion by
steam is beyond the reach of imagination. Thousands of islands,
clothed in gorgeous yet delicate vegetation, and enjoying the finest
climate, lie scattered like diamonds in a sea on which storms never
rage--each in itself an earthly paradise. When these islands can be
reached at a moderate outlay of time, money, and trouble, may we not
expect to see them visited by the curious, and flourishing as seats of
civilised existence? There is reason to believe, that the equable
climate of many of them would prove suitable for persons affected with
the complaints of northern regions; and therefore they may become the
Sanatoria of Europe. 'Gone to winter-quarters in the Pacific!'--a
pleasant notice this of a health-seeking trip twenty years hence.
It may be reasonably conjectured, that this great and varied extension
of journeying round the earth, and in all climates, will not be
unaided by new discoveries in motive power. At present, we speak of
steam; but there is every probability of new agents being brought into
operation, less bulky and less costly, before twenty years elapse.
Even while we write, men of science are painfully poring over the
subject, and giving indications that in chemistry or electricity
reside powers which may be advantageously pressed into the service of
the traveller. Admitting, however, that steam will be retained as the
prevailing agent of locomotion, we have grounds for anticipating
improvements in its application, which will materially cheapen its
use. As regards safety to life and limb, much will be done by better
arrangements. In steam-voyaging, we may expect that means will be
adopted to avert, or at least assuage, the terrible calamities of
conflagration and shipwreck--better acquaintance with the principles
of spontaneous combustion, and with the natural law of storms, being
of itself a great step towards this important result.
One of the latest wonders in practical science, is a plan for cooling
the air in dwellings in hot climates; by which persons residing in
India, and other oppressively warm countries, may live habitually in
an atmosphere cooled down to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, or the ordinary
heat of a pleasant day in England. The very ingenious yet simple means
by which this is to be effected, will form the subject of notice in
our next number. Meanwhile, we may observe that the discovery is due
to Mr C. Piazzi Smyth, astronomer-royal for Scotland; and if perfectly
successful in practice, of which there can be no reasonable doubt, it
will have a most important effect in extending European influence over
the globe.
The extension of the English language over the civilised world is a
curiosity of the age. French, German, Italian, and other continental
tongues, seem to have attained their limits as vernaculars. Each is
spoken in its own country, and by a few fashionables and scholars
beyond. But the language which pushes abroad is the English; and it
may be said to be rooting out colonised French and Spanish, and
becoming almost everywhere, beyond continental Europe, the spoken and
written tongue. Long the Spanish enjoyed the supremacy in Central
America; but it has followed the fate of the idle, proud, combative,
and good-for-nothing people who carried it across the Atlantic, and is
disappearing like snow before the sun of a genial spring. The sooner
it is extinct the better. Already the English is the vernacular from
the shores of the Atlantic to the Pacific, wherever civilised
settlements are formed. As large a population now speaks this nervous
language in America as in Great Britain; and this is only an
indication of its progress. By means of a rapidly-increasing
population, the English language will in twenty years be spoken by
upwards of fifty million Americans; and if to these we add all within
the home and colonial dominion, the number speaking it at that period
will not be short of a hundred millions. What an amount of
letter-writing and printing will this produce! And, after all, how
small that amount in comparison with what will be seen a hundred years
hence, when many hundred millions of men are on the earth, English in
speech and feeling, whatever may be their local and political
distinctions! The gratification which one experiences in contemplating
facts of this kind, transcends the power of language. To all
appearance, our English tongue is the expression of civil and
religious freedom--in fact, of common sense; and its spread over the
globe surely indicates the progress of civilised habits and
institutions.
In referring to the qualities which are usually found in connection
with the prevalence of English as a vernacular, we are led to
anticipate prodigious strides in the popularising of literature during
the next twenty years. What, also, may we not expect to see done for
the extension of epistolary correspondence? Intercourse by letter has
advanced only one step of its progress, by the system of inland
penny-postage. Another step remains to be effected: the system of
carrying letters oversea on the same easy terms. That this Ocean
Penny-Postage, as it is termed, will be carried out, at least as
regards the larger British colonies, within a period much under twenty
years, is exceedingly probable. When this grand achievement is
accomplished, there will ensue a stream of intercommunication with
distant lands, of which we can at present form no proper conception,
and which will go far towards binding all parts of the earth in a
general bond of brotherhood.
Such are a few of the things which we may be said to be warranted in
looking for within a reasonably short period of time. Other things,
equally if not more contributive to human melioration, are less
distinctly in expectation. The political prospects of the continental
nations are for the present under a cloud. With all the glitter of
artistic and social refinement that surrounds them, the bulk of them
appear to have emerged but little beyond the middle ages; and one
really begins to inquire, with a kind of pity, whether they have
natural capacities for anything better. The near proximity to England
of populations so backward in all ideas of civil polity, and so
changeful and impulsive in their character, cannot but be detrimental
to our hopes of national advancement among ourselves; so true is it
that peace and happiness are not more matter of internal conviction
than of external circumstances.
Unfortunately, if there be something to lament in the condition of our
neighbours, there is also something to humiliate on turning our
attention homeward. In a variety of things which are required to give
symmetry and safety to the social fabric, there appears to be an
almost systematic and hopeless stoppage.
Nearly the whole of the law and equity administration of England seems
to be a contrivance to put justice beyond reach; and whether any
substantial remedy will be applied during the present generation may
be seriously doubted.
It is universally admitted that, for the sake of the public health,
interment in London and other large cities should be legally
prohibited; and that various other sanitary arrangements in relation
to these populous localities should be enforced. Yet, legislation on
this subject seems to be beyond the grasp of statesmen.
The system of poor-laws throughout the United Kingdom is, with the
best intentions, a cause of widely-spread demoralisation. These laws,
in their operation, are, in fact, a scheme for robbing the industrious
to support the idle. But where is the legislator who will attack and
remodel this preposterous system?
The prevention of crime is another of our formidable social
difficulties. Every one sees how young and petty criminals grow up to
be old and great ones. It is admitted that the punishment of crime,
after disorderly habits are confirmed, is no sufficient check; and
that, if the evil is to be cured, we must go at once to its root. But
when or how is this to be done? Again, there is a call for that
scarcest of all things--statesmanship.
The bitterness of sectarian contention is another of the things which
one feels to be derogatory to an age of general progress. No longer
are men permitted to kill each other in vindication of opinion, but
how mournful to witness persecution by inuendo, vituperation, and
even falsehood. Individuals and classes are seen bombarding each other
in vile, abusive, and certainly most unchristian language, all
ostensibly in the name of a religion which has for a fundamental
principle, an utter repudiation of strife! Whether any amendment is to
be looked for in this department of affairs within the next twenty
years is exceedingly uncertain.
In the roll of disheartening circumstances in our social condition, it
would be unpardonable to omit the enormities of intemperance, which,
though groaned over day after day, remain pretty much what they have
been for years; and it is to be feared, that so long as reformers
confine themselves to attacking mere symptoms, instead of going to the
foundation of the evil--a deficiency of self-respect, growing out of a
want of instruction in things proper to be known, and for which the
education of the country makes no provision--all will be in vain. How
far there will prevail a more enlarged view of this painful subject,
is not discoverable from the present temper of parties.
The legislative conservation of ignorance in the humbler classes of
the community, to which reference has just been made, is surely a blot
on our social economy. It is seemingly easier to girdle the globe with
a wire, than to make sure that every child in Her Majesty's dominions
shall receive the simplest elements of education. Within the sphere of
the mechanic or the chemist, flights beyond the bounds of imagination
may be pursued without restraint, and indeed with commendation; but
anything in social economics, however philanthropic in design and
beneficial in tendency, falls into the category of disputation and
obstruction; and, worst of all, education, on which so much depends,
is, through the debates of contending 'interests,' kept at a point
utterly inadequate for the general enlightenment and wellbeing.
Thus, many matters of moment are either at a stand, or advancing by
feeble and hesitating steps, and the distance to be ultimately reached
remains vague and undefinable. At the same time, it is well to be
assured that improvements, moral and social, are really in progress;
and that, on the whole, society is on the move not in a retrograde
direction. Even with a stone tied to its leg, the world, as we have
said, contrives 'to get on some way or other.'