APPENDIX C
"It is of some importance at what period a man is born. A young man, alive
at this period, hardly knows to what improvements of human life he has been
introduced; and I would bring before his notice the following eighteen
changes which have taken place in England since I first began to breathe in
it the breath of life--a period amounting now to nearly seventy-three
years.
"Gas was unknown: I groped about the streets of London in all but the utter
darkness of a twinkling oil lamp, under the protection of watchmen in their
grand climacteric, and exposed to every species of depredation and insult.
"I have been nine hours in sailing from Dover to Calais before the
invention of steam. It took me nine hours to go from Taunton to Bath,
before the invention of railroads, and I now go in six hours from Taunton
to London! In going from Taunton to Bath, I suffered between 10,000 and
12,000 severe contusions, before stone-breaking Macadam was born.
"I paid L15 in a single year for repairs of carriage-springs on the
pavement of London; and I now glide without noise or fracture, on wooden
pavements.
"I can walk, by the assistance of the police, from one end of London to the
other, without molestation; or, if tired, get into a cheap and active cab,
instead of those cottages on wheels, which the hackney coaches were at the
beginning of my life.
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