very tubes, and the like nervous and
arterial connections.

It will certainly be a curious and varied region, far less monotonous
than our present English world, still in its thinner regions, at any
rate, wooded, perhaps rather more abundantly wooded, breaking
continually into park and garden, and with everywhere a scattering of
houses. These will not, as a rule, I should fancy, follow the fashion of
the vulgar ready-built villas of the existing suburb, because the
freedom people will be able to exercise in the choice of a site will rob
the "building estate" promoter of his local advantage; in many cases the
houses may very probably be personal homes, built for themselves as much
as the Tudor manor-houses were, and even, in some cases, as aesthetically
right. Each district, I am inclined to think, will develop its own
differences of type and style. As one travels through the urban region,
one will traverse open, breezy, "horsey" suburbs, smart white gates and
palings everywhere, good turf, a Grand Stand shining pleasantly;
gardening districts all set with gables and roses, holly hedges, and
emerald lawns; pleasant homes among heathery moorlands and golf links,
and river districts with gaily painted boat-houses peeping from the
osiers. Then presently a gathering of houses closer together, and a
promenade and a whiff of band and dresses, and then, perhaps, a little
island of agriculture, hops, or strawberry gardens, fields of
grey-plumed artichokes, white-painted orchard, or brightly neat poultry
farm. Through the varied country the new wide roads will run, here
cutting through a crest and there running like some colossal aqueduct
across a valley, swarming always with a multitudinous traffic of bright,
swift (and not necessarily ugly) mechanisms; and everywhere amidst the
fields and trees linking wires will stretch from pole to pole. Ever and
again there will appear a cluster of cottages--cottages into which we
shall presently look more closely--about some works or workings, works,
it may be, with the smoky chimney of to-day replaced by a gaily painted
windwheel or waterwheel to gather and store the force for the machinery;
and ever and again will come a little town, with its cherished ancient
church or cathedral, its school buildings and museums, its
railway-station, perhaps its fire-station, its inns and restaurants, and
with all the wires of the countryside converging to its offices. All
that is pleasant and fair of ou