And if Lord
Brouncker's native sagacity had not deserted his ghost, he would need
no long reflection to discover that all these great ships, these
railways, these telegraphs, these factories, these printing-presses,
without which the whole fabric of modern English society would collapse
into a mass of stagnant and starving pauperism,--that all these pillars
of our State are but the ripples, and the bubbles upon the surface of
that great spiritual stream, the springs of which, only, he and his
fellows were privileged to see; and seeing, to recognise as that which
it behoved them above all things to keep pure and undefiled.
It may not be too great a flight of imagination to conceive our noble
'revenant' not forgetful of the great troubles of his own day, and
anxious to know how often London had been burned down since his time,
and how often the plague had carried off its thousands. He would have
to learn that, although London contains tenfold the inflammable matter
that it did in 1666; though, not content with filling our rooms with
woodwork and light draperies, we must needs lead inflammable and
explosive gases into every corner of our streets and houses, we never
allow even a street to burn down.
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