c communication, the railroad. Just as
surely his idol Turner proved himself a romantic painter, not by his
rainbows, or his Italian sunsets, but by that picture of _Storm, Rain,
and Speed_--an old-fashioned express fighting its way through wind,
rain, and of course rainbows--in the English National Gallery.

With all his love of that light that never was on sea or land, Turner
was yet able to see the romance of that new thing of iron and steam so
affrighting to other men of his generation. A lover of light in all its
swift prismatic changes, he was naturally a lover of speed. He realized
that speed was one of the two most romantic things in the world. The
other is immobility. At present the two extremes of romantic expression
are the Sphinx and--the automobile. Unless you can realize that an
automobile is more romantic than a stage-coach, you know nothing
about romance. Soon the automobile will have its nose put out by the
air-ship, and we shall not need to be long-lived to see the day when
we shall hear old-timers lamenting the good old easy-going past of
the seventy-miles-an-hour automobile--just as we have heard our
grand-fathers talk of postilions and the Bath "flyer."

Romance is made of two opposites: Change, and That Which Changeth Not.
In spite of foolish sentimentalism, who needs be told that love is one
of those forces of the universe that is the same yesterday, today, and
forever--the same today as when Dido broke her heart, as when Leander
swam the Hellespont? Gravitation is not more inherent in the cosmic
scheme, nor fire nor water more unchangeable in their qualities.

But Love, contrary to the old notion that he is unpractical, is a
business-like god, and is ever on the lookout for the latest modern
appliances that can in anyway serve his purposes. True love is far from
being old-fashioned. On the contrary, true love is always up-to-date.
True love has its telephone, its phonograph, its automobile, and soon it
will have its air-ship. In the telephone alone what a debt love owes to
its supposed enemy, modern science! One wonders how lovers in the old
days managed to live at all without the telephone.

We often hear how our modern appliances wear upon our nerves. But think
how the lack of modern appliances must have worn upon the nerves of our
forefathers, and particularly our foremothers! Think what distance meant
in the Middle Ages, when the news of a battle took days to travel,
though carried by the