[Sidenote: _A GLANCE INTO THE FUTURE_] “I must ask him,” he continues, “to indulge his imagination with an excursion some twenty or thirty years forward in the regions of time; when the dark, unsightly, shapeless machine that now offends him, even in idea, shall he metamorphosed into one of exquisite symmetry and beauty, and as superbly emblazoned with heraldic honours as any that are now launched from the floors of Long Acre—a machine that may regale his nostrils with exhalations from some genial produce of the earth whose essence may be extracted at an insignificant cost, and its fragrance left on the breeze for the sensitive traveller’s gratification; that, instead of the rumble of coaches, may delight his ear with the concord of sweet sounds.” Wonderful man: penetrating intuition! But barbaric conservatism blocked the way, and not thirty years, but a weary period of seventy-two, intervened between his day and the fulfilment of his dream. In 1896 the Motor Car came, and we have now our fill of “exhalations,” whose “fragrance” is “left on the breeze” in the form of stinking petrol and fried lubricating oil; while streets and roads are smothered in dust and, in a “concord of sweet sounds,” resound to the crashing of gears and the bellowing of motor-horns, like the bulls of Bashan afflicted with bronchitis. But in that early experimental period a London and St. Albans Steam Carriage Company (among others) was formed, and made several trips with its uncouth monsters. Proposals were even made to establish a “steam-coach” service to Manchester, the coach to haul behind it a number of goods-waggons; but the turnpike authorities at Dunstable, anxious for the condition of their roads, hearing early of this proposition, were prepared for the unwelcome visitors, and, procuring cartloads of immense stones, strewed the highway with them. They certainly brought the “steam-coach” to a halt, but at the same time nearly wrecked the down Manchester mail; and it was a long while before the Post Office allowed them to forget their excess of zeal. VI [Sidenote: _THE “DEFIANCE”_]