large is wrapped in sleep, and probably not one
person in a hundred ever thinks or concerns himself to know how it is
done.

The frequency and rapidity of communication between different parts of
the world seems to have brought the whole globe into a very small focus,
for obscure places, which would be unknown, one would think, beyond
their own immediate neighbourhoods, are frequently well within the
cognisance of persons living in far-distant quarters. An instance of
this is given by the postmaster of Epworth, a village near to Doncaster.
"We have," says the postmaster, "an odd place in this parish known as
Nineveh Farm. Some years ago a letter was received here which had been
posted somewhere in the United States of America, and was addressed
merely

Mr. ----
NINEVEH.

I have always regarded its delivery to the proper person as little less
than a miracle, but it happened."

It is impossible to say how far the influence of this great revolution
in the mail service on land and sea may extend. That the change has
been, on the whole, to the advantage of mankind goes without saying. One
contrast is here given, and the reader can draw his own conclusions in
other directions. The peace of 1782, which followed the American War of
Independence, was only arrived at after negotiations extending over more
than two years. Prussia and Austria were at war in 1866. The campaign
occupied seven days; and from the declaration of war to the formal
conclusion of peace only seven weeks elapsed. Is it to be doubted that
the difference in the two cases was, in large measure, due to the fact
that news travelled slowly in the one case and fast in the other?

We may look back on the past with very mixed feelings,--dreaming of the
easy-going methods of our forefathers, which gave them leisure for study
and reflection, or esteeming their age as an age of lethargy, of
lumbering and slumbering.

We are proud of our own era, as one full of life and activity, full of
hurry and bustle, and as existing under the spell of high electrical
tension. But too many of us know to our cost that this present whirl of
daily life has one most serious drawback, summed up in the commonplace,
but not the less true, saying,--

"It's the pace that kills."

Yet one more thought remains. Will the pace be kept up in the next
hundred years? There is no reason to suppose it will not, and the world
is hardly likely to go to sleep. Our suc