Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/23

Rh ing. Consequently it is not surprising that in an age when the standards of duty were such as I have described this profession should have been the resort of almost every active and eager youth in the country. All who could do so became engineers; all who could not bewailed their incapacity or misfortune. Hence with all the best intellect of the country or indeed of the world hastening in one direction an amount of progress was made which would have seemed a wild dream to the men of fifty years back. Large buildings were moved from place to place with speed and security. Bridges were constructed across chasms of enormous span in an incredibly short space of time. Tunnelling was carried through mountains and under seas with less expenditure of time and labour than had been required for the puny mouseholes of the first half of the Nineteenth century. The natural force of the tides and of waterfalls, converted into electricity and so conveyed, was applied in unlimited quantity to works which had previously demanded the employment of thousands of men and horses. It was thus that it was found possible by the aid of automatic borers, excavators, and other machinery