My next point was that a successful nation would pursue the arts and sciences fruitfully. Both France and England may look back with satisfaction to all that has been done during the last fifty years. There has been absolutely no sign in either country of decadence, notwithstanding frequent self-depreciation. Of the scientific progress that has been made I will say little, from simple incompetence to deal with a subject so vast and so much beyond my grasp. I only know, as an ignorant yet interested spectator, that hardly any enterprise now seems to be too great for the intelligence of English and French engineers, or for the skill of the workmen whom they direct. If they do not build pyramids greater than those of Egypt and hippodromes more substantial than the Coliseum, it is only because there is no demand for them. Ours is the age of communication, and here England takes the lead with her railways, France with her admirable system of common roads and her complete inland navigation. France has made the Suez Canal, has attacked Panama, and is looking forward to a ship canal from Paris to the sea. Lancashire is making Manchester a seaport, and Scotland is bridging over the Firth of Forth. A gigantic project for a bridge from Dover to Calais is on the list of things that French engineers consider possible. It is difficult to state fairly what has been contributed by each country to the improvement of the railway and the telegraph; it is plain, however, that the practical art of railway travelling first originated in England. The first balloon rose in French air, and a balloon was for the first time successfully steered in France. The French are generally a little ahead of the English in military inventions, as in the use of breech-loading cannon and improved rifles and gun-powder, as well as other explosives, and now in the strength and perfection of armour-plating. Almost all the improvements in scientific agriculture are of English origin, and so are the machines used in it which are now extensively sold in France. Whilst the English are the greater maritime nation of the two and have an incomparably larger carrying trade, improvements in ship-building have usually originated either with the French or the Americans. In the construction of pleasure-boats, the English are ahead of the French for sea-going yachts (though inferior to the Americans), but the French with their great rivers have studied and brought to perfection the small centre-board sloop which tacks rapidly. [Sidenote: Manufactures.] [Sidenote: Printing.] [Sidenote: French _Éditions de Bibliophile_.] [Sidenote: Common French Editions.] [Sidenote: French Book-buyers.] [Sidenote: French Carelessness about cheap Work.] [Sidenote: Careless Correcting.]