Great, indeed, is the task assigned to woman. Who can elevate its dignity? who can exaggerate its importance? Not to make laws, not to lead armies, not to govern empires, but to form those by whom laws are made, and armies led, and empires governed; to guard from the slightest taint of possible infirmity the frail, and as yet spotless creature whose moral, no less than his physical, being must be derived from her; to inspire those principles, to inculcate those doctrines, to animate those sentiments, which generations yet unborn, and nations yet uncivilized, shall learn to bless; to soften firmness into mercy, to chasten honour into refinement, to exalt generosity into virtue; by her soothing cares to allay the anguish of the body, and the far worse anguish of the mind; by her tenderness to disarm passion; by her purity to triumph over sense; to cheer the scholar sinking under his toil; to console the statesman for the ingratitude of a mistaken people; to be the compensation for hopes that are blighted, for friends that are perfidious, for happiness that has passed away. Such is her vocation—the couch of the tortured sufferer, the prison of the deserted friend, the scaffold of the godlike patriot, the cross of a rejected Saviour; these are the scenes of woman's excellence, these are the theatres on which her greatest triumphs have been achieved. Such is her destiny—to visit the forsaken, to attend to the neglected; amid the forgetfulness of myriads to remember—amid the execrations of multitudes to bless; when monarchs abandon, when counsellors betray, when justice persecutes, when brethren and disciples fly, to remain unshaken and unchanged; and to exhibit, on this lower world, a type of that love—pure, constant, and ineffable—which in another world we are taught to believe the best reward of virtue.
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A PLEA FOR ANCIENT TOWNS AGAINST RAILWAYS.
It is impossible to look, without surprise, to the progress of the railway system since the first experiment in 1830. The Liverpool and Manchester line was opened in the September of that year, at an expense of £.1,200,000; and in the thirteen years since that period, line after line has been laid down and opened for traffic, till the completed railways amount to many hundred miles in length, and the expenditure of capital has been many millions of money.
The advantages of a line between Manchester and Liverpool were obvious. It connected the two towns—the importing and the manufacturing—which needed connexion the most; and, in fact, the harbour gained an enormous manufacturing population, and the population gained a harbour. The outlay, prodigious as it was, was found a profitable investment; but the benefits of the improvement were so great that the mere profits on the undertaking, as a pecuniary speculation, were lost sight of, in the higher view of the impetus given to the trade of these two main seats of our commercial enterprize. It became a national undertaking; Birmingham and the other wealthy towns were determined to have the same advantage; London became, of course, the great centre to which every new line tended; and in an incredibly short space of time, at an incredible expenditure of money, the iron and cotton emporiums of the north, the packet stations of the south and south-west, the agricultural and manufacturing districts of the north-east, all were moved into the actual neighbourhood of the capital. The beautiful Southampton water flowed within three hours of the Bank. Ipswich was not much further off than Hammersmith; and Bath and Bristol were but a morning's drive from Buckingham palace or Windsor.
What has been the effect of all these improvements, and to what do they all tend?
If the whole prosperity of a nation depended on rapidity of conveyance, there could be but one answer to the enquiry—but even in that case the prosperity must depend on rapidity of conveyance between the particular places which the railway unites—Manchester and Liverpool, Birmingham and London, and generally the great towns at the termini, and some throughout all of the intermediate stations, have cause to rejoice in the improvement. And land and houses in the neighbourhood have increased in value, their correspondence is conducted in half the time, and money is of course distributed in fertilizing rills by the crowds of travellers who pass through them on their way to join the train. But these advantages are local, and an opinion is now gaining ground that they are obtained at the expense of other places. What possible benefit can accrue to a town or neighbourhood near which the railway passes, but where there is no station? Can it encourage the trade of such a town as Dangley or Standon to know, that the five or six thousand beings who are whirled past them, with almost invisible rapidity, every day, arrive in Liverpool in ten hours after leaving London? On the contrary, is it not found to be directly injurious to them by the encouragement it gives to towns and villages more favourably situated; while their inns become deserted, their tradespeople are drifted out of the great stream of business, their turn-pikes are ruined, and grass grows in their streets. Let us take any one of the great lines, and see the number of towns whose ancient prosperity it has destroyed. From London to York a few years ago, ten or twelve coaches gave life and animation to all the places they passed through. Their hotels and commercial rooms were filled at every blowing of the guard's horn; tradespeople looked out from behind their counters with a smile, as, with a dart and rattle, the four thoroughbred greys pulled the well-known fast coach up the street, loaded inside and out. They became proud of their Tally-ho, or Phenomenon; they got their newspapers and parcels "with accuracy and despatch," and enjoyed the natural advantages of their situation. Now the case is altered; a two-horse coach, or perhaps an omnibus, jumbles occasionally to the railway station, and the traveller complains that it takes him longer time to go the ten or twelve miles across the country than all the rest of the journey. Then he grumbles at the inconvenience of changing his mode of conveyance, and only revisits the out-of-the-way place when he cannot avoid it.
A person settling in one of these towns twenty years ago, establishing trade, buying or building premises, in the belief that, however business may alter from other causes, his geographical position must, at all events, continue unchanged, must be as much astonished as was Macbeth at the migratory propensities of Birnam forest, when he perceives that towns a hundred miles down the road have actually walked between him and London; get their town parcels much earlier, and have digested and nearly forgotten their newspaper, while he is waiting in a fever of expectation to know whether rums is much riz or sugars is greatly fell. He calls for a branch railway to put him on equal terms; but a vast hill, perhaps, rises between him and the main line—it would cost forty thousands pounds a mile—he must bore an enormous tunnel, and fill up a prodigious valley, and the united wealth of all the shopkeepers in the town would fall far short of the required half million. He sinks down in sheer despair, or takes to drinking with the innkeeper, who has already had an attack of delirium tremens, gives up the Times newspaper for the Weekly Despatch, and thinks Mr Frost a much injured character, and Rebecca a Welsh Hampden. The railway has touched his pocket, and the iron has entered into his soul. He feels as if he lived at the Land's-End, or had emigrated to the back woods of America. All the world goes at a gallop, and he creeps. Finally, he is removed to Hanwell, and endeavours to persuade Dr Conolly that he is one of Stephenson's engines, and goes hissing and spurting in fierce imitation of Rapid or Infernal. And all this is the natural consequence of having settled in an ancient city inaccessible to rails. A list could easily be made out that would astonish any one who had not reflected on the subject before, of cities and towns which must yield up their relative rank to more aspiring neighbourhoods on whom the gods of steam and iron have smiled. It will be sufficient to point out a few instances in some of the main lines of mail-coach travelling, and see what their position is now.
Let us go to Lincoln, region of fens and enterprize, of fat land and jolly yeomen. The mail is just ready to start; we pay our fare, and, after seeing our luggage carefully deposited in the recesses of the boot, we mount beside the red-faced, much-becoated individual who is flickering his whip in idle listlessness on the box; the guard gives a triumphal shout on his short tin horn, the flickering of the whip ceases, the horses snort and paw, and finally, in a tempest of sound and a whirlwind of dust, we career onward from the Saracen's head, and watch the stepping of the stately team with pride and exultation—a hundred and forty miles before us, and thirteen hours on the road.
In fifty-five minutes we are at Barnet—pick up a stout gentleman and plethoric portmanteau in the green shades of Little Heath lane; and dashing through Hatfield, as if we were announcing Waterloo, change horses again at Stanborough. Away, away, the coach and we, with two very jolly fellows on the roof, and cross in due time the beautiful river Lea, scattering letter-bags at every gentleman's lodge as we pass, with a due proportion of fish-baskets and other diminutive parcels. Hedges, row after row, dance past us with all their leaves and blossoms—milestone after milestone is merrily left behind—we have crossed the Maran, the Joel; the sluggish Ouse, trotted gaily on under the shadow of the episcopal towers of Buckden, and perform wonders with a knife and fork, in the short space of twenty minutes, in the comfortable hotel at Stamford. Refreshed and invigorated with a couple of ducks and a vast goblet of home-brewed—for it is well known we and all other good subjects are rigid anti-Mathewsians—we continue our course through unnumbered villages and market towns, Coltersworth, Spittlegate, Ponton, Grantham, till Newark opens her hospitable gates; and finally, as "the shades of eve begin to fall," we descend from our proud eminence and commit ourselves to the tender attentions of a civil landlord, two waiters, and a stout chambermaid, in the chief inn of the good town of Lincoln.