Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/234

 respective Governments had been aroused to take quite a leading part; and a countless multitude of either nationality streamed forth, the one to bid farewell, the other to welcome, this new pledge and novel direction of international union. By this time there was no longer a Calais-Dover strait. Indeed the original viaduct, with its railway, thrown across many years before, had been already widened into a broad belt of intervening territory; while further north and south respectively, other like encroachments had been also successfully made upon the oceanic domain. While the long and well-crammed train is being drawn up at the half-way international boundary, and its most elegant and precious freight is being transferred to the charge of the committee of English matrons officially appointed for the purpose, let us make a few further and explanatory remarks upon this new and extending international custom.

These lively missions to, or invasions of, each other's country, soon took, even with the gentler sex, the form of national rivalry and challenge. Each country not only gave, as we have seen, accrediting passports to its youthful representatives, but grew more and more careful to select the very best of the youth for the purpose; and thus a high national interest was excited, before which the old horse-racing, cricketing, and such like, paled almost to insignificance. Thus the female accession to these excursions fell to be dealt with, and even, if possible, still more strictly, in the like discriminating way; and France, we may be sure, had put forth, on this first occasion, her full strength of beauty and accomplishment.

There was yet another curious result of this highly