Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/200

 362 WORKMEN AND HEROES and steamships from their infancy to their present world-embracing influence. The mileage of railways open in the United Kingdom in 1837 was about 294 miles, but a great proportion was worked by horses. In 1885 the mileage was 19,169, the gross receipts, .69,555,774; they carried about 1,275,000,000 passen- gers, and employed 367,793 men. Not a steamer had crossed the Atlantic by steam alone when the queen came to the throne, and her accession was in the year previous to that during which Wheatstone in this country, and Morse in America, introduced electric telegraphy. We, who enjoy express trains, six* penny telegrams, half-penny post-cards, and the parcel post, can scarcely realize that we are so near the. time when mail-coaches and sailing-packets were almost tne only means of conveyance, and when postage was a serious burden. The greatness of the changes in social life may be realized when we remember that, so recently as 1844, duelling was banished from the code of honor; that crime has diminished seventy-one per cent, since 1837 ; and that while fifty years ago Gov- ernment did nothing for education, there are now 30,000 public schools under the Privy Council. These facts are suggestive of the extent of the advance. Or if, without touching on the marvellous victories of science, we try to form an es- timate of religious progress, and take the tables for Protestant missions as giving a fair indication of the zeal and self-sacrifice of the churches, we find that while British contributions in 1837 amounted to ^3 16,610, in 1885 they reached 1,222,261. It may be said with truth that the progress thus indicated must have gone on, no matter who sat on the throne ; but it would be unjust not to recognize the close influence which the Crown has directly and indirectly exercised on its advance. There has been no movement tending to the development of the arts and the industries of the country which has not enlisted the active sympathy of the royal family. From the first the Prince Consort recognized the important part which the sovereign could fulfil in reference to the peaceful victories of science and art. Beginning with agriculture the improvement of stock and the better housing of agricultural laborers, we trace the effect of his constant toil in the series of industrial triumphs, of which the great exhibition of 185 1 was the magnificent precursor ; and, in recent years, the same kind of objects have always enlisted the best energies of the queen and her children. The contrast is great and touching between the scene in Westminster Abbey, when, amid the pomp of a gorgeous ceremonial and the acclamation of her sub- jects, the fair girl-queen received the crown of Britain, and that other scene, when, after fifty years of a government that has been unblemished, she once more kneels in the same spot a widow surrounded by her children and her children's children, bearing the burden of many sad as well as blessed memories, and en- compassed with the thanksgivings of the three hundred millions of her subjects. We can imagine how oppressive, for one so loving, must then be the vision of the past, as she recalls, one after another, the once familiar and dear faces which greeted her coronation, those relatives, great ministers of state, and warriors of whom so few survive ; and when all her happy married years and the years of