The steam engine familiarly explained and illustrated; with an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain maxims for railway speculators. By the Rev. Dionysius Lardner ... With additions and notes by James Renwick ...

LOCOMOTIVE ENGINES ON RAILWAYS. 159
moved some stages from. the metropolis, will become its
suburbs; others, now a day's journey, will be removed to its
immediate vicinity; business will be carried on with as much
ease between them and the metropolis, as it is now between
distant points of the metropolis itself. Let those who discard
speculations like these as wild and improbable, recur to the
state of public opinion, at no very remote period, on the sub,
ject of steam navigation. Within the memory of persons
who have not yet passed the meridian of life, the possibility
of traversing by the steam engine the channels and seas that
surround and intersect these islands was regarded as the
dream of enthusiasts. Nautical men and men of science
rejected such speculations with equal incredulity, and with
little less than scorn for the understanding of those who
could for a moment entertain them. Yet we have witnessed
steam engines traversing not these channels and seas alone,
but sweeping the face of the waters round every coast in
Europe. The seas which interpose between our Asiatic
dominions and Egypt, and those which separate our own
shores from our West Indian possessions, have offered an
equally ineffectual barrier to its powers. Nor have the
terrors of the Pacific prevented the "Enterprise" from
doubling the Cape, and reaching the shores of India. If
steam be not used as the only means of connecting the most
distant points of our planet, it is not because it is inadequate
to the accomplishment of that end, but because the supply
of the material from which at the present moment it derives
its powers, is restricted by local and accidental circumstances.*
We propose in the present chapter to lay before our readers some account of the means whereby the effects above
referred to have been produced; of the manner and degree
in which the public have availed themselves of these means;
* Some of the preceding observations on inland transport, as well as other
parts of the present chapter, appeared in articles written by me in the Edin.
burgh Review for October, 1832, and October, 1834.