295833
miles, whereas no observation can get nearer the truth than 3963.30 miles.
--Mill: _The Realm of Nature_. (Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner's
Sons.)
4. The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements of
society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our ancestors found
in passing from place to place. Of all the inventions, the alphabet and
the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance
have done most for the civilization of our species. Every improvement of
the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as
well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the
various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove national and
provincial prejudices, and to bind together all the branches of the great
human family. In the seventeenth century the inhabitants of London were
for almost every practical purpose farther from Reading than they are now
from Edinburgh, and farther from Edinburgh than they are now from Vienna.
--Macaulay: _History of England_.
5. He touched New England at every point. He was born a frontiersman. He
was bred a farmer. He was a fisherman in the mountain brooks and off the
shore. He never forgot his origin, and he never was ashamed of it. Amid
all the care and honor of his great place here he was homesick for the
company of his old neighbors and friends. Whether he stood in Washington,
the unchallenged prince and chief in the Senate, or in foreign lands, the
kingliest man of his time in the presence of kings, his heart was in New
England.
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