Come, my friend, and discourse with me.  Let us know what are thy ideas of the inestimable benefits which science has conferred on us in these, our latter days.  How dost thou, among others, appreciate railways and the power of steam, telegraphs, telegrams, and our new expresses?  But indifferently, you say.  ‘Time was I’ve zeed vifteen pair o’ ’osses go out of this ’ere yard in vour-and-twenty hour; and now there be’ant vifteen, no, not ten, in vour-and-twenty days!  There was the duik—­not this ’un; he be’ant no gude; but this ’un’s vather—­why, when he’d come down the road, the cattle did be a-going, vour days an eend.  Here’d be the tooter and the young gen’lmen, and the governess and the young leddies, and then the servants—­they’d be al’ays the grandest folk of all—­and then the duik and doochess—­Lord love ’ee, zur; the money did fly in them days!  But now—­’ and the feeling of scorn and contempt which the lame ostler was enabled by his native talent to throw into the word ‘now’, was quite as eloquent against the power of steam as anything that has been spoken at dinners, or written in pamphlets by the keenest admirers of latter-day lights.

’Why, luke at this ‘ere town,’ continued he of the sieve, ’the grass be a-growing in the very streets;—­that can’t be no gude.  Why, luke ’ee here, zur; I do be a-standing at this ’ere gateway, just this way, hour arter hour, and my heyes is hopen mostly;—­I zees who’s a-coming and who’s a-going.  Nobody’s a-coming and nobody’s a-going; that can’t be no gude.  Luke at that there homnibus; why, darn me—­’ and now, in his eloquence at this peculiar point, my friend became more loud and powerful than ever—­’why, darn me, if maister harns enough with that there bus to put hiron on them osses’ feet, I’ll—­be—­blowed!’ And as he uttered this hypothetical denunciation on himself he spoke very slowly, bringing out every word as it were separately, and lowering himself at his knees at every sound, moving at the same time his right hand up and down.  When he had finished, he fixed his eyes upon the ground, pointing downwards, as if there was to be the site of his doom if the curse that he had called down upon himself should ever come to pass; and then, waiting no further converse, he hobbled away, melancholy, to his deserted stables.

Oh, my friend! my poor lame friend! it will avail nothing to tell thee of Liverpool and Manchester; of the glories of Glasgow, with her flourishing banks; of London, with its third millions of inhabitants; of the great things which commerce is doing for this nation of thine!  What is commerce to thee, unless it be commerce in posting on that worn-out, all but useless great western turnpike-road?  There is nothing left for thee but to be carted away as rubbish—­for thee and for many of us in these now prosperous days; oh, my melancholy, care-ridden friend!