Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/270

 We shall recall some of the most prominent of his other statements, distinguishing, as they do, this turning point and departure in our national history.

Although the world, in this premier's day, had not, by any means, attained the advanced position and the huge population it can now boast of, yet there was a very substantial advance towards the grand modern destinies. We have seen that the edge of troublesome meteorologic disturbance had been already sensibly turned. The comfort as well as the profitable enterprise and uninterrupted industry of life had been further most materially promoted by the common system of interposing, throughout inhospitable latitudes especially, the protection of an overall glass roofing. This was the more needed when, by the gradual diminution of cloud and vapour in our atmosphere, through the contraction of the evaporable ocean surface over the earth, the ever-clearer sky gave us sharper alternations of heat and cold, especially between night and day. But now, on the other hand, our protecting glass, by way of a closer drawn and more reliable overhead sky, enabled us to make ourselves comfortable everywhere.

The system of subterranean abode to which the premier next adverted, and which has now, in our own more advanced day, been of stern necessity so universally developed, had made, however, even at this time, a fair progress. There was still, in that day, some natural variety of hill and dale scenery remaining over the world—unlike, in that respect, its present