Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/273

 Asia; while the South Western Line crossed the like reclaimed Channel to further western reclamationextensions of France and Spain; and the Great Western Line, coursing over the terra firma of what was once the Irish Sea, and through old Ireland, slipped out upon the great Atlantic area, over those already inaugurated bridging projections, which, from either side, were in after centuries to meet in lines and areas of solid ground over the whole interval. And already, too, had the enterprise of the time laid down, through intervening ocean depths, a highway to one of our chief outside gardens of climatic delights, our cherished Island of Madeira, which, with the express speed of the time, over the diamonded iron rails, so far surpassing in hardness and duration the old steel or merely carbonized rails, was like a kind of rural suburb to the metropolitan home territory, with the ever-fresh ocean still skirting the route, and serving, instead of intermediate open fields, to relieve the eye as it fain alternates from the crowded landscape. Thus pleasantly, as well as with the aspiring ambitions of his day, discoursed our premier of that expiring twenty-fourth century; and we must hope that he lived well into the twenty-fifth, so as to witness and enjoy some substantial share of those further wonders of progress, of which we have still to speak.

Before concluding our remarks upon this interesting transition time of our retrospect, let us glance at one