No One Would Probably Have Ever Thought Of
Making A Bridge Out Of His Own Unaided Imagination, More Than Any
Monkey That We Know Of Has Done So.
But an avalanche or a flood
once swept a pine into position and left it there; on this a
genius, who was doubtless thought to be doing something very
infamous, ventured to make use of it.
Another time a pine was
found nearly across the stream, but not quite, and not quite,
again, in the place where it was wanted. A second genius, to the
horror of his fellow-tribesmen - who declared that this time the
world really would come to an end - shifted the pine a few feet so
as to bring it across the stream and into the place where it was
wanted. This man was the inventor of bridges - his family
repudiated him, and he came to a bad end. From this to cutting
down the pine and bringing it from some distance is an easy step.
To avoid detail, let us come to the old Roman horse road over the
Alps. The time between the shepherd's path and the Roman road is
probably short in comparison with that between the mere chamois
track and the first thing that can be called a path of men. From
the Roman we go on to the mediaeval road with more frequent stone
bridges, and from the mediaeval to the Napoleonic carriage road.
The close of the last century and the first quarter of this present
one was the great era for the making of carriage roads. Fifty
years have hardly passed and here we are already in the age of
tunnelling and railroads. The first period, from the chamois track
to the foot road, was one of millions of years; the second, from
the first foot road to the Roman military way, was one of many
thousands; the third, from the Roman to the mediaeval, was perhaps
a thousand; from the mediaeval to the Napoleonic, five hundred;
from the Napoleonic to the railroad, fifty. What will come next we
know not, but it should come within twenty years, and will probably
have something to do with electricity.
It follows by an easy process of reasoning that, after another
couple of hundred years or so, great sweeping changes should be
made several times in an hour, or indeed in a second, or fraction
of a second, till they pass unnoticed as the revolutions we undergo
in the embryonic stages, or are felt simply as vibrations. This
would undoubtedly be the case but for the existence of a friction
which interferes between theory and practice. This friction is
caused partly by the disturbance of vested interests which every
invention involves, and which will be found intolerable when men
become millionaires and paupers alternately once a fortnight -
living one week in a palace and the next in a workhouse, and having
perpetually to be sold up, and then to buy a new house and
refurnish, &c. - so that artificial means for stopping inventions
will be adopted; and partly by the fact that though all inventions
breed in geometrical ratio, yet some multiply more rapidly than
others, and the backwardness of one art will impede the forwardness
of another. At any rate, so far as I can see, the present is about
the only comfortable time for a man to live in, that either ever
has been or ever will be. The past was too slow, and the future
will be much too fast.
Another thing which we do not bear in mind when thinking of the
Alps is their narrowness, and the small extent of ground they
really cover. From Goschenen, for example, to Airolo seems a very
long distance. One must go up to the Devil's Bridge, and then to
Andermatt. From here by Hospenthal to the top of the pass seems a
long way, and again it is a long way down to Airolo; but all this
would easily go on to the ground between Kensington and Stratford.
From Goschenen to Andermatt is about as far as from Holland House
to Hyde Park Corner. From Andermatt to Hospenthal is much the same
distance as from Hyde Park Corner to the Oxford Street end of
Tottenham Court Road. From Hospenthal to the hospice on the top of
the pass is about equal to the space between Tottenham Court Road
and Bow; and from Bow you must go down three thousand feet of zig-
zags into Stratford, for Airolo. I have made the deviation from
the straight line about the same in one case as in the other; in
each, the direct distance is nine and a half miles. The whole
distance from Fluelen, on the Lake of Lucerne, to Biasca, which is
almost on the same level with the Lago Maggiore, is only forty
miles, and could be all got in between London and Lewes, while from
Lucerne to Locarno, actually on the Lago Maggiore itself, would go,
with a good large margin to spare, between London and Dover. We
can hardly fancy, however, people going backwards and forwards to
business daily between Fluelen and Biasca, as some doubtless do
between London and Lewes.
But how small all Europe is. We seem almost able to take it in at
a single coup d'oeil. From Mont Blanc we can see the mountains on
the Paris side of Dijon on the one hand, and those above Florence
and Bologna on the other. What a hole would not be made in Europe
if this great eyeful were scooped out of it.
The fact is (but it is so obvious that I am ashamed to say anything
about it), science is rapidly reducing space to the same
unsatisfactory state that it has already reduced time. Take lamb:
we can get lamb all the year round. This is perpetual spring; but
perpetual spring is no spring at all; it is not a season; there are
no more seasons, and being no seasons, there is no time.
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