第27章

Now the boy has grown bigger.HE has got on a black gown and cap, something like the dervish.He is at a table, with ever so many bottles on it, and fruit, and tobacco; and other young dervishes come in.They seem as if they were singing.To them enters an old moollah, he takes down their names, and orders them all to go to bed.What is this? a carriage, with four beautiful horses all galloping--a man in red is blowing a trumpet.Many young men are on the carriage--one of them is driving the horses.Surely they won't drive into that?--ah! they have all disappeared.And now I see one of the young men alone.He is walking in a street--a dark street--presently a light comes to a window.There is the shadow of a lady who passes.He stands there till the light goes out.Now he is in a room scribbling on a piece of paper, and kissing a miniature every now and then.They seem to be lines each pretty much of a length.

I can read heart, smart, dart; Mary, fairy; Cupid, stupid; true, you; and never mind what more.Bah! it is bosh.Now see, he has got a gown on again, and a wig of white hair on his head, and he is sitting with other dervishes in a great room full of them, and on a throne in the middle is an old Sultan in scarlet, sitting before a desk, and he wears a wig too--and the young man gets up and speaks to him.And now what is here? He is in a room with ever so many children, and the miniature hanging up.Can it be a likeness of that woman who is sitting before that copper urn, with a silver vase in her hand, from which she is pouring hot liquor into cups? Was SHE ever a fairy? She is as fat as a hippopotamus now.He is sitting on a divan by the fire.He has a paper on his knees.Read the name of the paper.It is the Superfine Review.It inclines to think that Mr.Dickens is not a true gentleman, that Mr.Thackeray is not a true gentleman, and that when the one is pert and the other is arch, we, the gentlemen of the Superfine Review, think, and think rightly, that we have some cause to be indignant.The great cause why modern humor and modern sentimentalism repel us, is that they are unwarrantably familiar.Now, Mr.Sterne, the Superfine Reviewer thinks, "was a true sentimentalist, because he was ABOVE ALL THINGSa true gentleman." The flattering inference is obvious: let us be thankful for having an elegant moralist watching over us, and learn, if not too old, to imitate his high-bred politeness and catch his unobtrusive grace.If we are unwarrantably familiar, we know who is not.If we repel by pertness, we know who never does.If our language offends, we know whose is always modest.O pity! The vision has disappeared off the silver, the images of youth and the past are vanishing away! We who have lived before railways were made, belong to another world.In how many hours could the Prince of Wales drive from Brighton to London, with a light carriage built expressly, and relays of horses longing to gallop the next stage?

Do you remember Sir Somebody, the coachman of the Age, who took our half-crown so affably? It was only yesterday; but what a gulf between now and then! THEN was the old world.Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth--all these belong to the old period.Iwill concede a halt in the midst of it, and allow that gunpowder and printing tended to modernize the world.But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one.We are of the time of chivalry as well as the Black Prince or Sir Walter Manny.We are of the age of steam.We have stepped out of the old world on to "Brunel's" vast deck, and across the waters ingens patet tellus.Towards what new continent are we wending? to what new laws, new manners, new politics, vast new expanses of liberties unknown as yet, or only surmised? I used to know a man who had invented a flying-machine."Sir," he would say, "give me but five hundred pounds, and I will make it.It is so simple of construction that I tremble daily lest some other person should light upon and patent my discovery." Perhaps faith was wanting; perhaps the five hundred pounds.He is dead, and somebody else must make the flying-machine.But that will only be a step forward on the journey already begun since we quitted the old world.

There it lies on the other side of yonder embankments.You young folks have never seen it; and Waterloo is to you no more than Agincourt, and George IV.than Sardanapalus.We elderly people have lived in that praerailroad world, which has passed into limbo and vanished from under us.I tell you it was firm under our feet once, and not long ago.They have raised those railroad embankments up, and shut off the old world that was behind them.Climb up that bank on which the irons are laid, and look to the other side--it is gone.

There IS no other side.Try and catch yesterday.Where is it?

Here is a Times newspaper, dated Monday 26th, and this is Tuesday 27th.Suppose you deny there was such a day as yesterday?