ABSTRACT
In order to trace, if possible, some of the improvements made and inventions perfected in the art of locomotion, we must particularise the varieties of that movement itself. There was, of course, first of all motion upon the surface of the earth; and secondly, upon the surface of the sea; but to these we must now add locomotion within the earth, within the sea, and, most especially, within the air. As to what was known of either in your day I need say little; you are supposed to know what was current at that date. Your railway and steam-power was the highest development of transit upon land; and that received someimprovement in speed, method propulsion, and so forth during after-years. Upon the surface 58of the sea you had advanced to a very high pitch of navigation, still, your most ingenious steam-ships were much at the mercy of winds and waves. But as to the remaining diversities of locomotion, you were in the youngest infancy of development. You groped about in mines cut laboriously with pick and. spade, and that constituted your chief idea of underground traffic. One or two of your cities had railways laid below the streets and houses, but that scarcely illustrates the sort of movement I mean. It was a faint foreshadowing of it merely.
