6pectator," Januarp 40, 1851
At home, the half century has greatly changed the aspect of society: where all was Tory suppression at the beginning, all is thrown open now. We have gained freedom, political. religious, and commercial ; food, clothes, and lodging are cheaper ; the appliances of life., intellectual and material, pleasurable and useful, have been multiplied in every class. We have clubs for the wealthy, athenaeums' and mechanics institutes for the humbler ; the factory system, which dresses the women of the working class like the ladies of the last century, is the creation of the epoch which has given us railways, steam-ships, electric telegraph, the Roue telescope, photo- graphy ; " mesmerism " says the Post, and " chloroform "; also, cries the American, California. . . .
Looking back on the path we have come, and standing on the threshold of another half century, we ask in an admiring but not an exacting spirit, what in that period will be the unforeseen equivalents of chloroform and photography ; of the Rossc telescope, the oxyhydrogen miscroscope, and Crosse's electrical magic ; of the electric telegraph, of the steamship. and the railway ?
Previous page
