wood and other massive carpentry,
would form a, then inconceivable, contrast to the future taximeter cab,
to be evolved in this 20th century.

The lumbering "wain" of the Saxon churl, though still surviving in the
name of a constellation, befitted only an age little advanced beyond
barbarism.

The primitive "shout" (Dutch "schuyt"), or "dug-out" boat, hollowed by
Celtic flint-axe from the bole of a mighty oak, and slowly propelled by
the almost wild Girvian, through the tangle of fen morass, had but a
remote connection with the steam packet which, within living memory,
plied on the neighbouring Witham, between Boston and Lincoln. Although
the speed of the latter was so slow, that (as a friend of the writer has
done) a pedestrian, travelling by road, could reach either of those
places, from our town of Horncastle, in less time than it took to go by
carrier's van to Kirkstead wharf, and thence by the said steamer.

While, again, both these would provoke only a smile of contempt in the
voyager who now crosses the atlantic, at a rate of 20 knots or more in
the hour. Then, again, compare with these the cyclist, who now flashes
past us with the speed of lightning; or the motorist, who vanishes from
our sight, almost before the dust he has raised is blown away.

Another humbler mode of progress, again, was a familiar sight in our
boyhood, when the farmer's wife jogged contentedly to market, seated on a
pillion, behind her husband, and carrying her butter, eggs, or chickens,
in roomy market baskets by her side. Even the gig, to carry two, of the
better bucolic class, has now become obsolete, as the train pours out, at
the station, its living stream of market folk, male and female, within a
few minutes of leaving their own doors several miles away.

As to our country roads we are, it is true, well supplied with them, but
a pageant view of the past, such as we have here conceived, would reveal
to us our British forefathers, toiling, in wearied gangs, under Roman
task-masters, at the forced labour of road making; by which the town's
markets and chartered fairs were to be accessible, from all directions,
for generations yet unborn. In our present iron ways, we might well
suppose that we have attained the highest evolutionary stage in
expeditious traffic; but who, indeed, shall venture to gainsay, that as a
sequel to our wireless telegraphy, we may one day eschew the mundane
altogether, and become a race of aeronauts.

Th