Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 6, June 1852

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XL. June, 1852. No. 6.
Contents
J. Hayter W. H. Mote
THE BROOME STREET MANUFACTORIES.
GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XL. PHILADELPHIA, JUNE, 1852. No. 6.
R. HOE & CO.
GOLD STREET WAREHOUSES.
Had it been possible for any human intellect, at the close of the eighteenth century, or the commencement of this its nineteenth successor, so to grasp and comprehend the development of science, its expansion and diffusion, and, above all, its application to the every-day wants and conveniences of ordinary human life, as to predict, only fifty years beforehand, any one of the almost incredible marvels which have long ceased to move especial wonder, as being now established facts, witnessed by all eyes, and of occurrence at all hours, the owner of that intellect would not have been merely laughed at as a crazy, crack-brained enthusiast, but would have run a very reasonable chance of being consigned to the cell of a madhouse, as an incorrigible and incurable monomaniac.
The writer of these lines, lacking several years yet of the completion of his tenth lustre, clearly remembers how, within thirty years at furthest, to assert an opinion of the feasibility of lighting streets by gas was to be sneered at for a visionary, or regarded with suspicion as a probable speculator in the fancy, even by the best informed, and most enlightened classes.
To the youngest of his readers the dictum of the then infallible Doctor Dionysius Lardner against the possibility of Ocean Steam Navigation—for, deny it now as he may, he can be clearly convicted of its utterance—is familiar as a household word.