[Illustration: Father Mathew]
There were other enterprises now set on foot, by no means directly
philanthropic in their aim, which contemplated utility more than
virtue or justice--enterprises whose vast effects are yet
unexhausted, and which have so modified the conditions of human
existence as to make the new reign virtually a new epoch. As to the
real benefit of these immense changes, opinion is somewhat divided;
but the majority would doubtless vote in their favour. The first
railway in England, that between Liverpool and Manchester, had been
opened in 1830, the day of its opening being made darkly memorable by
the accident fatal to Mr. Huskisson, as though the new era must be
inaugurated by a sacrifice. Three years later there was but this one
railway in England, and one, seven miles long, in Scotland. But in
1837 the Liverpool and Birmingham line was opened; in 1838 the London
and Birmingham and the Liverpool and Preston lines, and an Act was
passed for transmitting the mails by rail; in 1839 there was the
opening of the London and Croydon line. The ball was set fairly
rolling, and the supersession of ancient modes of communication was a
question of time merely. The advance of the new system was much
accelerated at the outset by the fact that railway enterprise became
the favourite field for speculation, men being attracted by the
novelty and tempted by exaggerated prospects of profit; and the mania
was followed, like other manias, with results largely disastrous to
the speculators and to commerce. But through years of good fortune
and of bad fortune the iron network has continued to spread itself,
until all the land lies embraced in its ramifications; and it is
spreading still, like some strange organism the one condition of
whose life is reproduction, knitting the greatest centres of commerce
with the loneliest and remotest villages that were wont to lie far
out of the travelled ways of men, and bringing _Ultima Thule_ into
touch with London.
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