DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

( 38 ) asylums, whose views are said to be by no means the wildest to which the public are treated. Communication.—The expansion of the press to- wards the close of the last century was followed by numerous scientific discoveries of the utmost value. toads and canals furrowed the face of the country, rendering communicating between distant parts com- paratively easy, promoting an interchange of know- ledge of their wants and wishes between the people to an extent heretofore unknown ; thus uniting them for the attainment of objects In common, and so forming and coneentrating public opinion. In 1706 it took four days to travel from London to York by stage-coach, a journey not without its perils owing to the roads being infested with highwaymen. That journey can now be accomplished in four hours and a half. The utilisation of steam as a motive power by Watt in 1763, and its adaptation to the locomo- tive by Stephenson, have helped the material and moral progress of the country, no less than the invention of the telegraph in the early part of this century. Take a recent instance only. Mr. Gladstone’s speeches in Midlothian, some of them filling more than five columns of the Times, were in every news- paper office in the United Kingdom a couple of hours after he had delivered them; they were published in every newspaper on the following morning ; and,