Page:Revolution and Other Essays.djvu/162

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of the last century. But when the moment came to alter the methods of travel, the change was so sweeping that it may be safely classed as a revolution. Though the discovery of steam attaches to the honor of the last century, the potency of the new power was not felt till the beginning of this. By 1800 small steamers were being used for coasting purposes in England; 1830 witnessed the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway; while it was not until 1838 that the Atlantic was first crossed by the steamships Great Western and Sirius. In 1869 the East was made next-door neighbor to the West. Over almost the same ground where had toiled the caravans of a thousand generations, the Suez Canal was dug. Clive, during his first trip, was a year and a half en route from England to India; were he alive to-day he could journey to Calcutta in twenty-two days. After reading De Quincey's hyperbolical description of the English mail-coach, one cannot down the desire to place that remarkable man on the pilot of the White Mail or of the Twentieth Century.

But this tremendous change in the means of locomotion meant far more than the mere rapid transit