old,
to imitate his high-bred politeness and catch his unobtrusive grace.
If we are unwarrantably familiar, we know who is not. If we repel by
pertness, we know who never does. If our language offends, we know whose
is always modest. O pity! The vision has disappeared off the silver,
the images of youth and the past are vanishing away! We who have lived
before railways were made, belong to another world. In how many hours
could the Prince of Wales drive from Brighton to London, with a light
carriage built expressly, and relays of horses longing to gallop the
next stage? Do you remember Sir Somebody, the coachman of the Age, who
took our half-crown so affably? It was only yesterday; but what a gulf
between now and then! THEN was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or
less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor,
Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue,
and so forth--all these belong to the old period. I will concede a halt
in the midst of it, and allow that gunpowder and printing tended to
modernize the world. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a
certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We are of the time
of chivalry as well as the Black Prince or Sir Walter Manny. We are of
the age of steam. We have stepped out of the old world on to "Brunel's"
vast deck, and across the waters ingens patet tellus. Towards what new
continent are we wending? to what new laws, new manners, new politics,
vast new expanses of liberties unknown as yet, or only surmised? I used
to know a man who had invented a flying-machine. "Sir," he would say,
"give me but five hundred pounds, and I will make it. It is so simple
of construction that I tremble daily lest some other person should light
upon and patent my discovery." Perhaps faith was wanting; perhaps
the five hundred pounds. He is dead, and somebody else must make the
flying-machine. But that will only be a step forward on the journey
already begun since we quitted the old world. There it lies on the other
side of yonder embankments. You young folks have never seen it;
and Waterloo is to you no more than Agincourt, and George IV. than
Sardanapalus. We elderly people have lived in that praerailroad world,
which has passed into limbo and vanished from under us. I tell you it
was firm under our feet once, and not long ago. They have raised those
railroad embankments up, and shut off the old world that was behind
them. Cl