Pegasus

THE RAILWAY CENTENARY

I must begin somewhere, and since I refuse to begin at the soles of men’s feet, which are the beginning of his anatomy, the earth is our natural datum point, I will begin just a hundred years ago, when the world we know to-day was as remote from the world as it was then, as the world I hope to point the way to will, in many ways, be as remote from the world as it is now.

On the 27th of September, of this very year in which I write, took place the centenary of the opening of the Stockton and Darlington railway, and though it was not the first line to be constructed in England (for the Killingworth railway was built in 1814, and again this was not the first upon which locomotives ran), its claim to priority is nevertheless well founded, for it was the first railway the public noticed, and, in democratic countries, the birth of anything original must date from the moment the most ignorant in the land realize its existence. It flatters ignorance to be always first—such is democratic pride.

The 27th of September, 1825, was a very remarkable day in the world’s history, one of those birthdays which have no predictable date, but which depend on the outburst of genius of some great man. The great man was a humble and self-taught engine-wright from Killingworth, one George Stephenson, albeit an honest and persevering man, a worker, a thinker and a dreamer; one of those human thunder clouds which, from time to time, beat up against the conventional currents of thought, and out of which flash the lightnings of unsuspected things—a very remarkable and creative man.

On the 27th of September, a hundred years ago, a great concourse of people assembled at Brusselton Incline, some nine miles from Darlington. There, the travelling engine, as it was called, driven by George Stephenson, the greatest genius of his age, moved forward amidst shrill blasts of its whistle, “with its immense train of carriages,” thirty-eight in number; “and such was its velocity,” writes an eye-witness, “that in some parts the speed was frequently twelve miles an hour!” It took sixty-five minutes to cover the nine miles to Darlington, and the multitude stood aghast!

But the other day, I travelled in the “Detroiter” from New York to near by the front door of Mr. Henry Ford—another remarkable and self-taught revolutionary—the distance, if I remember rightly, some seven hundred and fifty miles, and the time taken was fourteen hours. From Brusselton Incline the iron horse hauled away, amidst wild excitement, the stupendous load of ninety tons. At Pittsburg, I have seen locomotives hauling six and seven thousand tons of coal, puffing by all unobserved. Surely Einstein is right, the relative is only true, and ninety tons in 1825 was almost as unbelievable as to-day would be a centaur galloping between the taxis of Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue.

All this must have been remembered during the centenary celebrations this year, and broadcast from meeting room, assembly hall and dinner table, for centenaries lose their interest without much feeding. There, little men in tail coats, morning jackets and lounge suits, some with trousers creased and others somewhat baggy at the knee, according to the political creed of the wearer, in port and beer, and, in America, I know not what, toasted the memory of the great man. Pæans and praise gushed from their arid heads like the water from the rock smitten by Moses. These little men, sitting for a bare few minutes on the chariot wheel of genius, did say, “What a dust do we raise!” And in our morning papers we read of all this blather and pomposity, and overlooked an eternal truth. For we got into our railway carriages next day and complained of their unfitness for human habitation, even of the most temporary nature, and condemned the line we were travelling on as impossible, because the train was five minutes late. Outwardly a very ordinary picture, all this—the drinking, speechmaking and travelling troubles of little men, some strap-hangers to genius, but most quite normal nonentities; yet behind it all lurks a somewhat interesting problem—the protean psychology of the very ordinary man.

THE PROTEAN PROBLEM

Since that famous Brusselton gathering, the noise of which has long deafened the world to the wonder of its sound, what changes do we see! A whole earth rejuvenated, as humanity, like a shuttle, works the woof of a new civilization through the warp of an old. Civilization is built on movement, and the picture of life to-day is as different from that of 1825, in rough proportion, as a cinema show differs from a neolithic rock painting. In this short hundred years, the life span of a very old man, such a revolution has been brought about by the locomotive that the world has been reborn. And, to our limited intelligence, always that of a child, we have forgotten the events of this first birthday; and the changes, which it conjured out of the depths of ignorance, are to-day accepted by us all as the essentials of our surroundings and as necessitous to our lives.

If some magician could appear to-day, and, by a wave of his wand, banish all railroads to limbo, a calamity would fall upon this world to which no parallel could be found since Noah entered the Ark. The greatest plagues, famines and wars would vanish like wisps of smoke into the night, when compared to its all-consuming horror. It would be like dragging out of the human body the arterial and venous systems, and yet leaving the man alive, an aching mass of bones and fiery nerves. The picture is indescribable, it is beyond the grasp of intelligence to grip it, and yet, in 1825, the ancestors, the grandfathers, and great grandfathers, and great grandmothers, too, of all the little men who in 1925 were dressed in dinner jackets (or tuxedo, as they call it over the Atlantic) morning coats and lounge suits, made to measure and “off the peg,” were shouting down George Stephenson, even more boisterously than their grandsons and great grandsons this year shouted him up. This, then is the protean problem, that eternal truth overlooked as we read in our newspapers that a workman has been killed in Walworth or a girl has deposited a baby outside an A.B.C. in the Strand, and so on, ad infinitum, the long categories of the normalities of life. This is the inner problem George Stephenson has to teach us, and let us consider it, for it is a live and moving problem, and one which will not be masticated by very ordinary men, as they gulp down their beer, their port or iced water. It is the problem of “‘Hail, king of the Jews,’ one day and ‘Crucify Him’ the next.” It is, as I say, the veritable protean problem of humanity, and nine hundred and ninety-nine human beings out of every thousand are very, very, ordinary men.

THE X-RAY TRANSPORTER

Let us picture to ourselves another magician descending on this earth of ours, a man of magic with the prosaic name of John Smith, yet none the less a man of genius, for all such are magicians in very fact. He is a very modern genius, and, I will suppose that he has discovered how to transform any and all physical things into ether waves moving at 186,000 miles a second, and that he can precipitate in its original form any article or being sent to any given spot; all this arrived at by tapping a key or pressing a button.

What a traffic problem is here opened to this world; so immense that it puts to blush the power of that horrid wizard who would remove our railways. Its conception is no more impossible than that of broadcasting. Even in so remote a village as Camberley (thirty miles distant from London, and there I write), where electrical genius is conspicuously absent, I can switch on to Paris and listen to Galli Curci or any other human bird. And what appears to me far more marvellous, simultaneously a fisherman in Trondhjem can do likewise. An immense audience in fact this Galli Curci can command, and totally unknown to her, totally unseen and out of contact even with itself, a dust of individuals, each speck of which can travel on or off her song by mere pressure of the hand, each speck of which can travel by ear at infinite speed and to any civilized point on the globe. If this is not magic, what is?

If song can be etherealized, why not then the singer? How much more remarkable would it not be, in place of scanning bold headlines of dead workmen and deposited babies, to read that Melba will sing in New York, at a quarter past three next Saturday afternoon, and at the Opera House in Paris, that very same day, and but twenty minutes later.

If we can transmit one thing, surely the day must soon come when we shall be able to transmit all things, and my genius John Smith is the man of that day. What could he not do? He could solve the traffic problem in Regent Street or Broadway, for all, astonished reader, you would have to do would be to sit on a transmitter, press a button, and in the minutest fraction of a second, you would find yourself in Peter Robinson’s, or Mr. Morgan’s office, or wherever you wanted to go, all for a penny or a couple of cents! He could banish the Communists to the moon, where there are no capitalists and where there is plenty of ice to keep their heads cool. He could replace the League of Nations by a row of chairs. The Grenadier Guards would fall in to the stentorian yells of their Sergeant-Major to be seated. The button would be pressed by the Army Council and, in less than a twinkle of an eye, they would be doing their famous goose-step down the Sieges Alle, to the utter consternation of the terrible Teuton.

Dear and crawling reader, what could he not do, and what could not you do? Half-a-crown, or half-a-dollar, would take you round the world—bag, baggage and all. And if you do not forget your purse, you can breakfast in New York at a cafeteria, lunch with Ongo-Pongo on the shores of Lake Chad, have tea in Yoshiwara, at the “Nectarine” for choice, and sup with Doris in the Bois de Boulogne at 8.30—this, indeed, is to live.

But what would you do—you beefsteak-eating bull of a Briton, yes, what would you do? You would don your lounge suit or your morning coat, or your tuxedo, as your great grandfathers did right back in 1825. You would become thoroughly traditional and would say: “Why, this man is mad—a raving lunatic! Send me to Lake Chad?... Good God, man, what is he thinking about ... Lock him up!”

Then the storm would burst. The leading engineers, “eminent” as they are called by every newspaper, would say it was contrary to etheric law; Harley Street would be thoroughly up in arms, for all their old lady friends might suddenly betake themselves in a second to Madeira and get cured of their ailments; the physicians would say the human frame cannot stand this rush; the bath-chairmen would say that their occupation was gone; the lawyers would say it was illegal and that it would lead to the Cocos Islands becoming a refuge for criminals; the soldiers would say, how could they be expected to protect this dash dashed land, why, it did not fit their strategy, therefore it must be wrong. And what would the clergy say? Heaven alone knows, for whilst antiquity and things antiquated separate the Churches, any novelty of a progressive nature is apt to bring them together with amazing unanimity.

The reader may be beginning to think that I, the writer, am off my head, but I am not. So far, all I have done is to reveal protean possibilities, now I will turn to actualities of the same psychological order. I will imagine that this genius Mr. Smith has, in disgust, removed himself to Aldebaran, and that we are about to get back to the Brusselton Incline.

ERICHTHONIUS, WHEELWRIGHT

I must have missed the Incline in my haste to get back to Brusselton, for I find myself in Athens in the Minoan age, or thereabouts, for the year is 1486 B.C. Everyone seems very excited; porters have thrown down their baskets and are yelling unintelligible words, yet of a pronounced and universal meaning; shoemakers are beating at a house door with their lasts. Whatever is up? A dainty little creature, some now far away Doris, approaches me and says: “Do you know what that old blighter (my Attic is weak) has done? Why, he has invented a thing called a chariot, and all these poor people have lost their jobs.”

Of course, Erichthonius never invented the chariot; the idea of a pure inventor is but a piece of proletarian imagery, a morsel of that ignorance which is the soul of the crowd. This old man, even if he ever lived, which seems doubtful, did no more than Savery did, or Newcomen, or Watt, or Stephenson, or Marconi did; that is, he was a link in that great chain we call progress, each link being the great thought of a great man. Tutenkhamon had his chariot as we well know, and many another before him, and we read in the Acts of the Apostles of a eunuch of great authority, a kind of Maître d’Hôtel of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, journeying to Jerusalem sitting in his chariot reading Esaias, the prophet, which is no mean compliment to the Roman road-makers in Palestine.

I must, however, hasten back to Brusselton, for there lies my goal; but stop, what is this? “A whirlicote,” a “Noah’s Ark,” or, in common language, an Elizabethan coach; for sure—a direct descendent of the handicraft of Erichthonius. The Earl of Rutland, it is said, first built whirlicotes in this country, in 1565, and, in spite of the villainous condition of the roads, my lords and ladies soon took to them. This, apparently, was a sure proof, in its day, that the country was going to the dogs; for, early in the seventeenth century, a bill was brought into Parliament “to prevent the effeminacy of men riding in coaches.” Hitherto Englishmen had ridden or walked, why should they not continue to do so, why not, indeed?

In the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the number of coaches in London was reckoned at six thousand and odd, and in a curious old book, published in 1636, and recently reprinted, called “Coach and Sedan,” of these six thousand and odd whirlicotes we read:—

“I easilie (quoth I) beleeve it, when in certaine places of the Citie, as I have often observed, I have never come but I have there, the way barricado’d up with a Coach, two, or three, that what hast, or businesse soever a man hath; hee must waite my Ladie (I know not whose) leasure (who is in the next shop, buying pendants for her eares; or a collar for her dogge) ere hee can find any passage.”

It is Regent Street or Fifth Avenue over again, for, according to this author, when there is a new Masque at Whitehall, the coaches stand together “like mutton-pies in a cooke’s oven,” and then he adds: and “hardly you can thrust a pole between them!”

In its turn, the stage coach was opposed tooth and nail, because it was something new. In 1671, Sir Henry Herbert, M.P., stated that: “If a man were to propose to convey us regularly to Edinburgh in seven days, and bring us back in seven more, should we not vote him to Bedlam?” Sir Henry Herbert is what I call a psychological Proteus, a kind of intellectual amoeba which propagates itself by simple division, the parts of which are always with us and alike—they never die.

THE PHILOSOPHER’S STEAM

The Brusselton Incline is now in sight, so I will pause and look back whilst I regain breath. The horse of Troy was a very wonderful beast, and many strange things came out of it, for it was the strangest thing man had seen since the Ark. But years after Troy was burnt, a stranger thing was seen in Alexandria. It was called an aeolipile, a kind of rudimentary steam engine, which was invented by one, Hero, in 130 B.C. He used it to open and close the doors of a temple, yet it was eventually destined to open the portal of a new world, a glimpse of which would have sent Hero or Columbus completely out of their minds. Yet these greater doors remained closed for seventeen hundred years, when another, this time Battista della Porta, in the year 1601, re-discovered the power of steam.

In 1641, Marion de Lorme, accompanied by the Marquis of Worcester, visited the madhouse of the Bicêtre in Paris, and this is what he writes:—

“We were crossing the court, and I, more dead than alive with fright, kept close to my companion’s side, when a frightful face appeared behind some immense bars, and a hoarse voice exclaimed, ‘I am not mad! I am not mad! I have made a discovery that would enrich the country that adopted it.’ ‘What has he discovered?’ asked our guide. ‘Oh!’ answered the keeper, shrugging his shoulders, ‘Something trifling enough; you would never guess it; it is the use of the steam of boiling water.’”

Who was this maniac? It was Solomon de Caus, he had a vision whilst dabbling with steam vessels, and he had seen carriages and ships propelled by steam. This was too much for men dressed in half hose and doublets, or whatever was the tuxedo of their day. “Carriages driven by steam ... lock him up!” So he was locked up. But the idea lived on, and it grew. There was Giovanni Branca, Edward Somerset, Marquis of Worcester, then Thomas Savery, who, in 1698, obtained a patent for a water raising engine. There were others, Jean de Hautefeuille, who, in 1678, suggested the piston; Denis Papin, 1690, of cylinder and piston fame. At length Thomas Newcomen, 1705, something near success; others still, Humphrey Potter, Henry Beighton, but all waiting for the man. Then the man came in the form of a poor instrument maker, and the new Jerusalem of the steam age was Glasgow, for there did he work. This man was James Watt, who, having realized that the cylinder of an engine should always be as hot as the steam which entered it, in 1769 threw open the doors of the most stupendous epoch in economic history. The transmutation of heat into mechanical work had been discovered, it was the true stone of the philosophers, the “Open Sesame” to another age.

GEORGE STEPHENSON, ENGINE-WRIGHT

In the very year James Watt built the first practical steam engine, namely, the year 1769—the year Napoleon was born—fearful riots were taking place in Russia, because some enlightened person had introduced the potato, a useful vegetable as we all know, yet at this time one in which the Russian peasant saw the Satanic thumb, for he was certain that this humble vegetable was the “devil’s apple.” Though why this should have detracted from its nutritive qualities I cannot say.

Looking back now, and we are nearing Brusselton, it seems to me that there is no difference between the spirit of these deluded peasants and those who, with shoe lasts, beat vigorously on the door of Erichthonius’s house. They are one and all Sir Henry Herberts, though the particular cut of their clothes may differ. George Stephenson, having studied steam engines in general and Mr. Trevithick’s crude and inefficient locomotive in particular, determined to build one of his own, and, with the support of Lord Ravensworth, he accomplished this feat at Killingworth in 1814. There the first efficient locomotive was made. Had Lord Eldon been a Russian, he would probably have objected to potatoes, but being an Englishman he preferred bigger game. “I am sorry,” he said, “to find the intelligent people of the North-country gone mad on the subject of railways.” A few miles had only been opened, but this was quite sufficient to establish madness, and by some other of his ilk, the adage, “A fool and his money are soon parted,” was applied to Lord Ravensworth.

The Killingworth railway was followed by the Stockton and Darlington line. Mr. Edward Pease, the Quaker supporter of Stephenson, had said: “Let the country but make the railroads, and the railroads will make the country.” Be it remembered that locomotives had been working at Killingworth, and very efficiently, for ten years; but there were others who, unlike Mr. Pease, were full of the spirit of old Herbert. The Duke of Cleveland opposed the measure in Parliament, as the line would pass through his fox covers, and, due to his influence it was thrown out. A new survey was made, avoiding these precious earths, and the railway was built.

The next line was that between Manchester and Liverpool. Lord Derby turned out his farm hands to chase Stephenson’s surveyors off his estates. Lord Sefton did likewise, and the Duke of Bridgewater threatened to shoot them at sight. Stephenson had his theodolite so often smashed that he deemed it wise to hire a prize fighter to carry it. The “Quarterly Review” supported the project, and it is curious to read what it said, for it will give the reader some idea of the virulence of the opposition. It says:

“What can be more palpably absurd and ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stage coaches! We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve’s ricochet rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine going at such a rate.... We trust that Parliament will, in all railways it may sanction, limit the speed to eight or nine miles an hour, which we entirely agree with Mr. Sylvester is as great as can be ventured on with safety.”

This was praise indeed, and it is amazing that the British Parliament, which is always full of ordinary men, did not take the hint and limit the speed of the locomotive to that of a trotting horse. Nevertheless, though this grand opportunity was missed, the Parliamentary Committee did all in its power to obstruct the measure. One of its members asked George Stephenson: “Suppose a cow were to stray upon the line?” There was a hush of horror, then he added: “Would not that, think you, be a very awkward circumstance?” “Yes,” answered Stephenson, “very awkward indeed—for the coo!”

The leading councils openly declared that this “untaught and inarticulate genius” was mad.... “Every part of the scheme shows that this man has applied himself to a subject of which he has no knowledge, and to which he has no science to apply.” Not only would these locomotive engines be a terrible nuisance, “in consequence of the fire and smoke vomited forth by them,” but “the value of land in the neighbourhood of Manchester alone would be deteriorated by no less than £20,000!” “The most absurd scheme that ever entered into the head of man to conceive,” shouted Mr. Alderson, the leading counsel. “No engineer in his senses would go through Chat Moss,” solemnly declared Mr. Giles, the most eminent engineer brought forward by the opposition. He estimated the cost of such a project at £270,000. Stephenson did it for £28,000, but the line was an expensive one as it had so many fox covers to avoid.

All this was but a preliminary skirmish, the main battle now began. The beef-eating Briton was thoroughly aroused. George Stephenson was considered to be an incarnation or certainly an implement of his Satanic Majesty. The public were appealed to, and ever ready to hinder progress, they took off their tuxedo, smocks, frocks, morning coats or whatever covered their bodies, and formed phalanx against the common foe. A meeting of Manchester ministers of all denominations was convened. This meeting declared that the locomotive was “in direct opposition both to the law of God and to the most enduring interests of society.” This set match to powder. The doctors declared that the air would be poisoned and birds would die of suffocation. The landowners, that the preservation of pheasants and foxes was no longer possible. Householders, that their houses would be burnt down and the air polluted by clouds of smoke. Horse-breeders, that horses would become extinct. Farmers, that oats and hay would be rendered unsaleable. Innkeepers, that inns would be ruined. Passengers, that boilers would burst. Heaven knows who—“that the locomotive would prevent cows grazing, hens laying, and would cause ladies to give premature birth to children at the sight of these things moving at four and a half miles an hour!”

Yet there was this consolation. The very, very ordinary man, the British public at large, declared that “the weight of the locomotive (six tons!) would completely prevent its moving, and that railways, even if made, could never be worked by steam power.” Yet for ten years now, and more, the Killingworth engines were running daily!

The Stockton and Darlington line was a tremendous success; so also was the railway between Manchester and Liverpool, yet opposition thickened rather than lessened. In 1830, the “Rocket” had attained a speed of thirty-five miles an hour, yet, in 1832, Colonel Sibthorpe (the Army now come into the picture and oh! how bravely), declared his hatred of these “infernal railroads,” and that he “would rather meet a highwayman, or see a burglar on his premises, than an engineer!” When the Birmingham railway bill was before Parliament, Sir Astley Cooper, that most eminent of surgeons, declared: “You are entering upon an enormous undertaking of which you know nothing. Then look at the recklessness of your proceedings! You are proposing to destroy property, cutting up our estates in all directions! Why, gentlemen, if this sort of thing be permitted to go on, you will in a very few years destroy the noblesse!” And this, from a man who had been knighted for cutting a wen out of George IV.’s neck!

THE NATURE OF THE BEAST

All this is not only amusing, but vastly instructive—these beaters of shoe lasts on the lintel of genius. Here we have a deep and vivid study presented to us of popular ignorance, that universal coagulant of truth. In 1824, George Stephenson had said to his son and a companion: “Now lads, I will tell you that I think you will live to see the day when railways will come to supersede almost all other methods of conveyance in this country—when mail coaches will go by railway, and railroads will become the Great Highway for the King and all his subjects. The time is coming when it will be cheaper for a working man to travel on a railway than to walk on foot.”

The victory was won in 1825, the year following this memorable prophecy; yet, in 1835, the reactionaries were still fighting a rear guard action, and we find the landed gentry sending forward their servants and luggage by rail and condemning themselves to jog along the roads in the family coach. On the Continent it was just the same, and even in 1862 the Papal Government opposed the opening of the Rome and Naples railway. The rear guard fought on until June, 1842, when, on a certain Monday, Her Majesty Queen Victoria made her first railway trip. It was from Windsor to London, and her coach had a crown on its roof. The reactionaries went head over heels, donned their frock coats or whatever garment appertained to their social rank, and declared the railway the greatest blessing God had ever permitted man to discover. The Marquis of Bristol, wildly excited, said that “if necessary, they might make a tunnel beneath his very drawing-room,” and the Rev. F. Litchfield that he did not mind if a railway ran through his bedroom, “with the bedposts for a station.” Ever irrational and unbalanced, very ordinary men went as mad on railways as they had been mad against them. The panic of 1844–1846 was the result. In the last-mentioned year applications were made to Parliament for powers to raise £389,000,000 for the construction of new lines.

On the 26th of June, 1847, a year before George Stephenson died, he attended the opening of the Trent Valley Railway. Sir Robert Peel was his host and proclaimed him “the chief of our practical philosophers.” Seven baronets and two or three dozen members of Parliament, all in frock coats and tall hats, did homage to the great engineer, whilst the clergy blessed the enterprise and bid all hail to the new line as “enabling them to carry on with greater facility those operations in connection with religion which were calculated to be so beneficial to the country.”

I wonder what passed in George Stephenson’s mind. In 1825 he was universally proclaimed mad and a danger to society; in 1847 he is proclaimed “the chief of our practical philosophers” and the saviour of society. I wonder which he objected to most—their abuse or their praise? Both, I should imagine, were largely overlooked by him, for he was a very great man, and surely those who abused him and praised him—very, very small—truly insignificant.

PROTEAN IGNORANCE

Protean ignorance never dies; this is the problem which confronts us. George Stephenson has only been my peg upon which I have hung this musty old skin, indeed no golden fleece, but just as magical, so that I might the better examine it; and a fine stout peg it is—all of British oak.

Stephenson was the father of the locomotive; as to this there can be no dispute, and equally can there be no doubt that the locomotive has changed the superstructure of the civilized world, yet its foundations remain permanently fixed. Matter fluctuates as the will of man unmasks the material world; but the soul of man remains fixed, abiding in the solitude of his ignorance.

Ignorance and stupidity are always with us, they are the Dioscuri of the temple of life. To change the material world is like changing our clothes, to change the spiritual world is like changing our intestines. Spiritual, I admit, is not the exact word, neither is moral nor human. To me, the spiritual is all-pervading and uninfluenced by intelligence or reason. A man who is grossly ignorant is grossly religious, for he is a worshipper of idols.

To-day we see the multitudes bending the knee to Baal, and yet we see them surrounded by misery, woe and suffering. No disease is incurable, no ill cannot be conquered. But every would-be saviour, however humble, must prepare for crucifixion, because the very multitudes they would save are in themselves their worst enemies.

Henry Herbert never dies, he was here before Adam took form from out the dust of Eden, and he will be the last man to leave this earth when the last trumpet sounds, and I have not the slightest doubt that he will then question the wisdom of the Almighty. He will question the wisdom of all things new, and yet, to-day, the world is groaning for novelty, for material growth means also material decay. Though very ordinary men can build middens, it is only the extraordinary man who can shift these piles of refuse—accumulations of old traditions, customs and accepted things. To me the moral of this centenary is not the power of steam, but the power of the will of man. George Stephenson triumphed over all difficulties, because he was possessed of a will to win. The stronger opposition grew the more mighty grew his will. Protean ignorance has, therefore, its virtue; it renders progress difficult to attain; it is the whetstone of genius. When we realize this, in place of wringing our hands in lamentation when Henry Herbert beats his last against our door, we open it and look at him, and laugh, and then close it and go on with our work—in one word, we persevere. Laughter and Perseverance, surely these two are the shield and sword of progress.