Let sentimental Ruskinites the thing disparage,
Most scenery afoot you miss—it cannot be denied:
The Nature-lover's point of view's a third-class smoking carriage,
'Twould be a blot if there were not a line to Ambleside.
"Justice at Fault," a cartoon in 1887, based on a recent inquiry, reiterates Punch's familiar complaint: overworked signalmen are punished, while the directors go scot free. No jarring note, however, is struck in the cartoon in the same year on the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway—"the New North-West Passage," or in the verses in which Britannia and Canada exchange mutual compliments and indulge in hopeful auguries. The opening of the first electric underground railway in England by the Prince of Wales on November 4, 1890, passed unnoticed by Punch, but he rendered full justice in 1891 to the historic conclusion of the famous "Battle of the Gauges," when Stephenson's triumph over Brunel was finally crowned by the abandonment of the broad gauge on the Great Western. It had been an heroic contest, and Punch treated the defeated champion with dignity and respect, quoting the words, "Good-bye, poor old Broad Gauge, God bless you!" which were found written on the G.W. track.
The record of novelties, inventions and discoveries opens modestly in 1875 with the mention of hot-water bottles in bed as "a new idea." They have long since ousted the warming-pan, which until recently maintained a precarious existence in old-fashioned inns, and is now merely a picturesque antique. Lovers of The Rose and the Ring will remember its use as a weapon, and romantics will deplore its abandonment, for there is no romance in a hot-water bottle. I have dealt with the bicycle under the head of Pastime, but may supplement what I have said elsewhere with a few further observations on this momentous innovation. What I believe to be the first mention of the word occurs towards the end of 1878. Before that we only hear of velocipedes or "rantoones," and in the year 1879 an epigram refers to the "Bycicle." Punch's early references to the "steel horse" and the "public wheel" are decidedly friendly, and he contrasts the bicyclist favourably with the hangers-on of the noble animal:—
No slinking knaves environ him
And dog his ins and outs;
No jockeys, ostlers, stable-boys,
No tipsters and no touts.