for our bones and our brains; nor did they depend, as we have now to do, upon our twice-blessed and productive dead, who were then, perhaps, more of trouble than profit to the living, whereas now, in such striking contrast, they are our indispensable heritage of good things. Our premier's total omission of both of these great modern questions, for good or for evil, of our day, showed that they had not yet loomed seriously upon the horizon of his much earlier time.
The premier concluded by an inspiring allusion to the great progress of his time through the universal application of convertible energy. What might he not have said on this vast subject, if he could but have been resurrectioned into our time! Still, he had something to boast of even in those far-back days. As he glanced over the world's busy scene, he remarked that electric light had everywhere, when required, made the night as bright as the day, while electricity mainly supplies all their locomotive energy. And already, as he remarked, they were helping themselves to electric force, freely and cheaply, out of the sun's ample stores. The crowding earth had already, indeed, inaugurated the relief of aërial travel, that great feature and resource of our own more advanced time; but the old railway era had not yet closed; and the premier could allude with triumph to the fact of his day, that our great trunk lines, retaining still their venerable old names, and radiating still from the vast metropolis of England, were no longer arrested at the shores of the narrow old island. Our Great Eastern Line, for instance, then passed outwards and onwards over the wholly reclaimed North Sea continuously to Eastern Europe and furthest
