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.
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