improve material things. In another part of England ingenious

people were beginning to use coal in smelting iron, and were

producing metal in abundance and metal castings in sizes that had

hitherto beenunattainable. Without warning or preparation,

increment involving countless possibilities of further increment was

coming to the strength of horses and men. "Power," all

unsuspected, was flowing like a drug into the veins of the social

body.

Nobody seems to haveperceived this coming of power, and nobody had

calculated its probable consequences. Suddenly, almost

inadvertently, people foundthemselves doing things that would have

amazed their ancestors. They began to construct wheeled vehicles

much more easily and cheaply than they had ever done before, to make

up roads and move things about that had formerly been esteemed too

heavy for locomotion, to join woodwork with iron nails instead of

wooden pegs, to achieve all sorts of mechanical possibilities, to

trade more freely and manufacture on a larger scale, to send goods

abroad in a wholesale and systematic way, to bring back commodities

from overseas, not simply spices and fine commodities, but goods in

bulk. The newinfluence spread to agriculture, iron appliances

replaced wooden, breeding of stock became systematic, paper-making

and printing increased and cheapened. Roofs of slate and tile

appeared amidst and presently prevailed over the original Bromstead

thatch, the huge space of Common to the south was extensively

enclosed, and what had been an ill-defined horse-track to Dover,

only passable by adventurous coaches in dry weather, became the

Dover Road, and was presently the route first of one and then of

<<BackPagesTo menuForward>>