There are of course no beginnings or ends in history. We may walk for a few miles by the side of a river, noting its shallows and its rapids, the gorges which confine it and the plains through which it meanders; but we know that we have seen neither the beginning nor the end of its course, that the whole river has an unbroken continuity, and that sections, whether of space or time, are purely arbitrary. We are always sowing our future; we are always reaping our past. The Industrial Revolution began in reality before the accession of George III, and the French monarchy was stricken with mortal disease before Louis XV bequeathed his kingdom to his luckless successor.
But there can be no question that the river of civilisation reached a stretch of rapids towards the end of the eighteenth century. For instance, in locomotion the riding-horse and pack-horse had hardly given place to the coach and waggon before the railway superseded road traffic; the fast sailing clippers had a short lease of life before steam
