Title:  Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852

Author:  Various

Editor:  Robert Chambers and William Chambers

Release Date:  December 14, 2005 [EBook #17303]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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Chambers’Edinburgh journal

Conducted by William and Robert Chambers, editors of ’Chambers’s
information for the people,’ ‘Chambers’s educational course,’ &c.

No. 429.  New series.  Saturday, march 20, 1852.  Price 1-1/2_d._

THINGS IN EXPECTATION.

The passing age is acknowledged to be remarkable in various respects.  Great advances in matters of practical science; a vast development of individual enterprise, and general prosperity;—­at the same time, strange retardations in things of social concern; a singular want of earnestness in carrying out objects of undeniable utility.  Much grandeur, but also much meanness of conception; much wealth, but also much poverty.  A struggle between greatness and littleness; intelligence and ignorance; light and darkness.  Sometimes we feel as if going forward, sometimes as if backward.  One day, we seem as if about to start a hundred years in advance; on the next, all is wrong somewhere, and we feel as if hurriedly retreating to the eighteenth century!

Upon the whole, however, we are ourselves inclined to look at the bright side of affairs; and in doing so, we are not without hope of being able to make some proselytes.  Let us just see what are the prospects of the next twenty years—­a long enough space for a man to look forward to in anything else than a dream.  War, it is true, may intervene, or some other terrible catastrophe; but we shall not admit this into our hypothesis, which proceeds on the assumption, that although people may wrangle here and there, and here and there fly at each other’s throats, still the bulk of civilised mankind will go on tranquilly enough to present no direct barrier to the advancing tide.  Here is a list of a few trifles in expectation.

A line of communication by railway from England to the principal cities in India, interrupted only by narrow sea-channels, and these bridged by steamboats.  It will then be possible to travel from London to Calcutta in a week.