Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/151

 afterwards arose between these two greatest cities of the world, it seemed at first generally supposed that London, being so much later in the reconstructive field, could hardly hope to overtake her great rival, and would thus remain permanently second in this resanitation and reconstruction race. But this surmise proved altogether erroneous. We began, indeed, comparatively late, but under enormous comparative advantages, arising out of a wider experience, and more accurate idea of all the wants of the case, as well as a more comprehensive and systematic plan, and greater pecuniary resource, and a more advanced art and science, to give effect to the whole project. Our course was thus marked, not only by greater regularity and rapidity, but by far more variety and excellence of adaptation to the needs alike of the present and of the impending far greater future. In nothing were our later superiorities more obvious than, for instance, in the superseding, to a large extent, of the huge cumbrous masonry of stone and bricks and mortar—a style of the past for which we had no longer either room or patience, in the busy and crowded conditions into which our national life was entering. And in other ways, as we shall now see, we went radically to work, keeping always steadily in view, as I have said, the larger wants of our expanding future.

When the minister of the day first announced his grand project, it was curious to mark the earlier effects upon his audience, alike within and without