Every able-bodied man in Canada between the ages of 20 and 45 was under drill, and the country was fully prepared and fully expecting to undertake the invaders without outside assistance, but Great Britain being in no danger now in Europe, despatched 12,000 men to Canada, and with her recovered prestige was enabled to remonstrate forcibly with the Washington Government concerning American connivance.  The British remonstrances had the desired effect, for the American authorities promptly arrested the leaders of the “army of deliverance,” though by so doing they aroused the animosity of many of their own supporters.  The “army” then speedily fell away and all danger was over.  Of course the benefit to Canada of having had the national feeling so deeply stirred was incalculable, for all classes of men in all the provinces had been animated by the profoundest sentiments and the strongest determination possible, and it was the opinion of leading military men of the time that the Canadians under arms, though outnumbered trebly by the intending invaders, would have held their own gallantly and have come off victorious.

The excitement aroused by these stirring occurrences began to quiet down towards the approaching Fall, when the Canadian ship of state was again under full sail, heading for the waters of prosperity.  Since then our political history has been so intimately connected with great inventions and discoveries, that a narration of one without a description of the other is scarcely possible.

II.

“For miracles are ceased;
“And therefore we must needs admit the means
“How things are perfected.” 

                                        —­Henry V, Act I.

It was well understood by the Romans in their palmy days that a great empire could not be held together without means of easy communication between distant provinces, and their fine hard roads ramifying from Rome to the remote corners of Gaul or Dacia, testify to their wisdom and enterprise in this respect.  When Great Britain in the eighteenth century, full of inventive skill, reared men who by means of improved roads, well-bred horses and fine vehicles raised the rate of travel to ten miles an hour from end to end of the kingdom, a great deal of complacent satisfaction was indulged in over the advantages likely to result from such rapid travelling.  This great speed, however, was made to appear quite slow in the first half of the nineteenth century when locomotives were invented capable of covering sixty miles an hour.  Nowadays the old cumbrous locomotive, rumbling and puffing along and making only sixty miles in sixty minutes, is a very dilatory machine in comparison with our light and beautiful rocket cars, which frequently dart through the air at the rate of sixty miles in one minute.  The advantages to a country like ours, over 3,000 miles wide, of swift transit are