The success of the locomotive and the rapidity of movement which it created, with the decreased cost of travel, were early suggestive of the modifications which would arise in thought, in manners, in the form of life and the political aspirations of modern times. The opening of railways in the early stages of the system established that the new mode of conveyance was one attended with less risk and danger than the old stage and mail coach, and by the control obtained over it applicable to all our wants. Moreover, it was of common utility from the extreme lowness of the charge which it exacted from those using it. It is no exaggeration to say that with the highest class of minds profound emotion was experienced in the changes which they saw would follow in the introduction of this new awakening of thought. It was to them an entirely new departure from old traditions. The ordinary mass of men saw but little beyond the excitement of the hour. Not a few feared trouble in its democratic developments, that something portentous and inevitable had come into being, the consequences of which could not be foreseen. It was felt that life henceforth would be turned into a new track. Men traced an analogy of feeling to that experienced by their fathers when America was discovered, when printing became a power, when the Reformation established liberty of thought and made inward conscience the guide of conduct. It was felt that new relations of life, new comforts, joys and sorrows had come upon us; that the institution of the railway seemed almost a special dispensation, the ends of which were inscrutable, and that the very form and colour of our being had been changed. There are numerous passages in modern literature to prove that in no way I exaggerate the anticipations which were formed, and doubtless which many can well remember. As we look back to 1839, when the “Rocket” ran the first trip, we have but a few years of interval beyond half a century within which every department of human life has been expanded, enlarged and widened. Much as successive additions, adaptations and developments have made the locomotive in its character, weight, power and capabilities, wonderfully in advance of the primitive machine of that date--in itself, be it said, in every respect remarkable, containing many elements of what was to follow--so our lives, by its influence have, step by step, assumed a totally distinct and different character to that which marked the early days of the century.