Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/159

 Again, the locomotive system for passengers must needs follow its customers from the underground to the upper ground, to which, as regarded railway conveyance, they mostly now confined themselves. This was so far foreseen from the first, in the arrangements made for an elevation-railway system, which crept in very quietly behind the grand fronts, and within the huge blocks of the new city. Here countless trains, running over noiseless rails, long provided for our locomotive wants, until, in after centuries, crowded off the surface into the roomier areas of the atmosphere above, to which our travelling has since been restricted.

No feature of reconstructed London was more of a surprise upon the old stereotyped building idea than that of the rapidity of the reconstruction. Our ideas, in regard to the art of building, under the new opportunities and circumstances now presented, had completely changed, alike as to the space allowed, and the time sacrificed, to building. The old leisurely ways, over huge masses of damp stone or other masonry, had been to a large extent exchanged for light but strong and, indeed, practically everlasting structures of steel and tiles and glass, which were put together with unprecedented cheapness, precision, and despatch. One of the new streets, in the earlier years of the reconstruction, had become famous for the unprecedented fact of its having been commenced and completed all within a single week. This was the triumph of a supreme effort of its time. But even this wonder of its day was destined to be easily surpassed by more practised skill, and still more precisely adapted masonry, farther on. Indeed the