Part 32
The century, even if we are in full decadence (of which we are not the best judges), has been glorious in literature, and holds its own well with any in modern history. English itself has passed from the occasionally stilted Augustan survival, through the novelties of Macaulay, De Quincey, and Carlyle, and the early decorated of Mr. Ruskin, into slipshod slang in one extreme, and euphuism in the other. But the main stream keeps its course, and English may be written with perfect purity, and with new fluency and variety, by the men for whom the task is reserved by fate. But what does the century bequeath by way of intellectual motive? Little but the more or less transformed forces of the eighteenth century. There is science, but science, happily, is beginning to be aware that she is not really omniscient. Conceivably her foot is on the border of a new region, often surmised, never explored, full of light on the problems of spirit and matter. Hence, indeed, might come a new force in letters. Again, the social ideas of 1750–1800 may take practical shapes of incalculable momentousness, but these would not for long be favorable to literature. Or, less probably, the return on the past may assume practical shape, though this element of the later eighteenth century may seem, as far as letters go, to be exhausted. In brief, as I began by saying, the division of literary periods by measures of time is a cross-division. This peculiarity the last hundred years possess: that literature now blossoms on a far wider field. English-speaking America had, indeed, a literature long before the War of Independence; but it was not a literature for every reader of to-day. Now, and for long, the States have taken their own part in history, fiction, poetry, and all other branches of letters. Germany came back into world literature again just at the ending of the eighteenth century, after unregarded ages of neglect. Russia and the Scandinavian North awoke about the same time, and daily widen their influence, as does Belgium in the sunshine of Maeterlinck. France, of course, has in all time been in the foremost rank; while to balance America, Russia, and the North, Italy and Spain have scarcely held the place which through so many centuries was their own. Such changes in national literatures resemble the political waxings and wanings of national fortunes. The English-speaking peoples may have their eclipse; perhaps it is heralded by a modern comparative deficiency in humor which, if England and America cease to laugh, will die out of a profoundly solemn world.
In the foregoing remarks little has been said about the literature of the century except among English-speaking peoples. Not being a Mezzofanti, I am not personally acquainted with the literature of all languages, and it is a vain thing to speak of books at second hand. It was not the nineteenth but the eighteenth century that saw Germany re-enter the field of pure literature, as distinguished from that of scholarship and science. Since the end of the Middle Ages, with their poets, German writers had mainly been devoted to theology and classical criticism. Latin was the language of the learned. Many ascertainable causes, in the middle and end of the eighteenth century, and doubtless many causes which cannot be ascertained, awoke again the Teutonic genius. The victories of Frederick the Great gave Germans patriotism and confidence in their own tongue.
The philosophic and social works which preluded to the French Revolution stirred the German mind and required popular expression. Thus Kant wrote in his own native speech in reaction against the sceptical philosophy of David Hume, and Kant became the father of the long array of German metaphysicians from Hegel and Fichte to Schopenhauer and Hartmann. Their philosophy “cannot be briefly stated, especially in French,” as one of them said, but its general effect has been rather to counteract materialism by making it pretty plain that human nature is not so simple and easily to be explained as the Scottish philosophers were apt to suppose. In England, Coleridge gave an Anglican heart to the new German philosophy, which also influenced Hamilton, and still affects the philosophical teaching of Oxford. “It is nonsense, but is it _the right sort_ of nonsense?” asked the late Professor Sidgwick (a Cambridge man) when struggling with the examination papers of a Hegelian undergraduate.
More important as literature were the double influences of return on the mediæval past and of inspiration by the new political and social ideas which gave the impulse to the genius of Goethe, Schiller, Bürger, and others. Goethe began as the child of Rousseau, but as a child who had read Kant, and drunk deep of the romance of the Middle Ages. Doubtless his is the greatest name of modern Germany, both as a student of life, of nature, of history, and of thought. He was the spiritual parent of Scott, with his _Götz von Berlichingen_, and, with Richter, of Carlyle. Through himself and his English or Scottish disciples, Goethe has been the most fertile source of change in the literature of the nineteenth century. In extreme old age, curious to say, he gave the first impulse to the study of early religion as displayed in the obscure rites and beliefs of the Australian natives: a theme remote enough from his effect on the poetry of Matthew Arnold. Probably the two parts of his _Faust_ and his _Roman Lyrics_ are the most popular, and, as literature, the most permanent parts of his work, with _Werther_, _Wilhelm Meister_, and _Elective Affinities_, in prose. Schiller, beginning with the boyish romanticism of _The Robbers_, became a kind of classic in his later dramas. Lessing and Winckelmann were the most sound and fertile influences in criticism. _The Laocoon_ remains indispensable. The patriotic lyrists resurrected the national spirit of the Teutonic race, and Heine, Hebrew by race and half French in character, combined the characteristics of Lucian, Burns, and Voltaire.
Wolf, writing in Latin (and I believe that his work on Homer has never attained a third edition, and has never been translated into English), became the parent, for good or evil, of what is called the Higher Criticism, Lachmann introducing the painfully conjectural tendencies of that intellectual exercise. Its application to scriptural texts is notorious, but not precisely as part of literature. Like other European countries, the Germany of the close of the century is not remarkable for resplendent genius in poetry or fiction, though novels abound. The scientific, historical, and scholarly literature is of vast profusion. In thoroughness and tireless patience, Germany is the teacher of the world, while in curious contrast to her practical genius is the love of some of her scholars for baseless conjecture. The “insularity” with which the English are charged is a matter of reproach by French scholars against Germany. Some sets of ideas, long familiar in America, England, and the Latin nations, are only now beginning to reach German classical scholars.
To write an account of the changes in French literature during the century is impossible within moderate space. The revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were unfavorable to the literary art, and the head of so great a poet as André Chénier fell under the guillotine. Till about 1825–1830 the Restoration was accompanied by literature in the old classic style of Boileau and of the Augustan age, only enlivened by the romantic if somewhat affected style of that great rhetorician, Châteaubriand. The year 1830 is the sacred year of French romanticism, drawing its ideals partly from the German romantic movement, partly from Scott and Shakespeare, read, of course, only in translations. Everything was now to be mediæval, Spanish, and passionate: the drama was to be emancipated from Aristotle, also read in translations. As far as classicism went the young adventurers had no more Greek than Shakespeare or Scott. But they had the colossal and Titanic genius of Hugo, exquisitely sweet, rapid, strange, and versatile in lyric: potent, if inflated, in the drama and the novel. They had the charming humor and exquisite taste of Théophile Gautier; the feverish passion and mastery in verse of Alfred de Musset; the delicate, dreamy, and wandering spirit of Gérard de Nerval; and the manly, courageous, humorous, and unwearied vigor, in drama and in fiction, of Alexandre Dumas.
This was, indeed, an extraordinary generation, by far the greatest since that of Corneille, Racine, and Molière. Many others might be named: the reserved force and incisive irony of Mérimée; the learned and genial criticism of Sainte-Beuve; the inexhaustible talent of George Sand, and the mighty Balzac, the maker and founder of the modern work of introspection. Probably, of all these writers, Dumas and Balzac have exercised most influence on later fiction in England and America. Flaubert continued, with painful elaboration, the traditions of Balzac; from Flaubert, and round him, grew up Daudet and M. Zola, and the Goncourts. Poetry, after Lamartine, dwindled into the prettinesses of the Parnasse and the eccentricities, too obviously intentional, of Baudelaire, Verlaine, and the Symbolistes. Literary art, at the end of the century, became too self-conscious, too fond of argument about ideals and methods, the tattle of the studio. Great men have not thus dissipated their energy; they have done what they could do; they have not talked about how they did it. What English literature was borrowed from France, at this time, is more in the nature of words than work. Criticism has been a _chimaera bombinans in vacuo_, chattering about realism, naturalism, symbolism, the use of documents, and so forth. The defects, rather than the merits, of France have been imitated; a squalid pessimism is easily affected.
The closing century has seen Russia awake, as the close of the eighteenth century beheld the literary revival of Germany. Russian poetry has only reached the learned among us: the novels of Turguenieff, Dustoiefsky, and Tolstoï are read in translation, with curiosity, antipathy, enthusiasm, and an absence of that emotion. It is very long since Terentianus Maurus remarked that the fortunes of a book depended on the taste of the reader. Often he is favorably impressed, not by the actual merit of the story as a story or as a work of literary art, but by its appeal to his private sentiments, as of socialism, pessimism, toryism, or whatever they may be. Possibly the vehement admirers of some Russian writers have been thus misguided. In any case, no qualified critic thinks that his opinion of works which he cannot read in the original language is of any value. For this reason I need not offend or please the reader by offering any uninstructed sentiments about the great Scandinavian dramatist, Dr. Ibsen; or concerning the work of Signor d’Annunzio, or the plays of M. Maeterlinck. To pronounce each of these gentlemen a Shakespeare or Æschylus is not unusual in cultivated circles; it remains for the new century to ratify or quash the verdict. In the mean time, have the approving critics taken the precaution of reading Æschylus and Shakespeare?
ANDREW LANG.
ENGINEERING
The material prosperity of the last century is due to the co-operation of three classes of men: the man of science, who lives only for truth and the discovery of nature’s laws; the inventor, eager to apply these discoveries to money-making machines and processes, and the engineer, trained in mathematical investigation and in knowledge of the physical conditions which govern his profession, which is the mechanical application of the laws of nature.
Engineering is sometimes divided into civil, military, and naval engineering. The term civil engineering, which will be here described, is often used by writers as covering structural engineering only, but it has a much wider meaning.
The logical classification is: statical engineering, including that of all fixed bodies, and dynamical, covering the movement of all bodies by the development and application of power.
Statical engineering can be again subdivided into structural engineering, or that of railways, highways, bridges, foundations, tunnels, buildings, etc.; also, into hydraulic engineering, which governs the application of water to canals, river improvements, harbors, the supply of water to towns and for irrigation, disposal of sewage, etc.
Dynamical engineering can be divided into mechanical engineering, which covers the construction of all prime motors, the transmission of power, and the use of machines and machine tools. Closely allied is electrical engineering, the art of the transformation and transmission of energy for traction, lighting, telegraphy, telephoning, operating machinery, and many other uses, such as its electrolytic application to ores and metals.
Then we have the combined application of statical, mechanical, and electrical engineering to what is now called industrial engineering, or the production of articles useful to man. This may be divided into agricultural, mining, metallurgical, and chemical engineering.
Surely this is a vast field, and can only be hastily described in the sketch which we are about to give.
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
This is the oldest of all. We have not been able to surpass the works of the past in grandeur or durability. The pyramids of Egypt still stand, and will stand for thousands of years. Roman bridges, aqueducts, and sewers still perform their duties. Joseph’s canal still irrigates Lower Egypt. The great wall of China, running for fifteen hundred miles over mountains and plains, contains one hundred and fifty millions of cubic yards of materials and is the greatest of artificial works. No modern building compares in grandeur with St. Peter’s, and the mediæval cathedrals shame our puny imitations.
These mighty works were built to show the piety of the Church or to gratify the pride of kings. Time and money were of no account. All this has now been changed. Capital controls, and the question of time, money, and usefulness rules everything. Hence come scientific design and labor-saving machinery.
The engineer of our modern works first calculates the stresses on all their parts, and proportions them accordingly, so that there is no waste of material. Hand labor has given place to steam machinery. All parts are interchangeable, so that they can be made and fitted together in the least possible time, as is seen every day in the construction of a steel-framed office building. Our workmen receive much higher wages than in the past, while time and cost have been diminished.
RAILWAYS
The greatest engineering work of the nineteenth century was the development of the railway system which has changed the face of the world. Beginning in 1829 with the locomotive of George Stephenson, it has extended with such strides that, after seventy years, there are 466,000 miles of railways in the world, of which 190,000 miles are in the United States. Their cost is estimated at forty thousand millions of dollars, of which ten thousand millions belong to the United States.
The rapidity with which railways are built in the United States and Canada contrasts strongly with what has been done in other countries. Much has been written of the energy of Russia in building 3000 miles of Siberian railway in five or six years. In the United States an average of 6147 miles was completed every year during ten successive years, and in 1887 there were built 12,982 miles. The physical difficulties overcome in Siberia are no greater than have been overcome here.
This rapid construction is due to several causes, the most potent of which has been the need of extending railways over great distances with little money. Hence they were built economically, and at first in not as solid a manner as those of Europe. Steeper gradients, sharper curves, and lighter rails were used. This rendered necessary a different kind of rolling-stock suitable to such construction. The swivelling-truck and equalizing-beam enabled our engines to run safely on tracks where the rigid European engines would soon have been in the ditch.
Our cars were made longer, and by the use of longitudinal framing much stronger. A great economy came from the use of annealed cast-iron wheels, with hardened tires, all in one piece, instead of being built up of spokes, hubs, and tires in separate parts. These wheels now seldom break, and cost much less than European wheels. As there are some eleven million car-wheels in use in the United States the resulting economy is great.
It was soon seen that longer cars would carry a greater proportion of paying load, and the more cars that one engine could draw in a train, the less would be the cost. It was not until the invention by Bessemer in 1864 of a steel of quality and cost that made it available for rails that much heavier cars and locomotives could be used. Then came a rapid increase. As soon as Bessemer rails were made in this country, the cost fell from $175 per ton to $50, and now to $26.
Before that time a wooden car weighed sixteen tons, and could carry a paying load of fifteen tons. The thirty-ton engines of those days could not draw on a level over thirty cars weighing 900 tons.
The pressed steel car of to-day weighs no more than the wooden car, but carries a paying load of fifty tons. The heaviest engines have now drawn on a level fifty steel cars, weighing 3750 tons. In the one case the paying load of an engine was 450 tons; now it is 2500 tons.
Steep grades soon developed a better brake system, and these heavier trains have led to the invention of the automatic brake worked from the engine, and also automatic couplers, saving time and many lives. The capacity of our railways has been greatly increased by the use of electric block-signals.
The perfecting of both the railway and its rolling-stock has led to remarkable results.
We have no accurate statistics of the early operation of American railways. In 1867 Poor’s Manual estimated their total freight tonnage at 75,000,000 and the total freight receipts at $400,000,000. This was an average rate per ton of $5.33.
In 1899 Poor gives the total freight tonnage at 975,789,941 tons, and the freight receipts at $922,436,314, or an average rate per ton of ninety-five cents. Had the rates of 1867 prevailed, the additional yearly cost to the public would have been $4,275,000,000, or sufficient to replace the whole railway system in two and a half years.
This is an illustration only, but a very striking one. Everybody knows that such high rates of freight as those of 1867 would have checked traffic. This much can surely be said: the reduction in cost of operating our railways, and the consequent fall in freight rates, have been potent factors in enabling the United States to send abroad last year $1,456,000,000 worth of exports and flood the world with our food and manufactured products.
BRIDGE BUILDING
In early days the building of a bridge was a matter of great ceremony, and it was consecrated to protect it from evil spirits. Its construction was controlled by priests, as the title of the Pope of Rome, “Pontifex Maximus,” indicates.
Railways changed all this. Instead of the picturesque stone bridge, whose long line of low arches harmonized with the landscape, there came the straight girder or high truss, ugly indeed, but quickly built, and costing much less.
Bridge construction has made greater progress in the United States than abroad. The heavy trains that we have described called for stronger bridges. The large American rolling-stock is not used in England, and but little on the continent of Europe, as the width of tunnels and other obstacles will not allow of it. It is said that there is an average of one bridge for every three miles of railway in the United States, making 63,000 bridges, most of which have been replaced by new and stronger ones during the last twenty years.
This demand has brought into existence many bridge-building companies, some of whom make the whole bridge, from the ore to the finished product.
Before the advent of railways, highway bridges in America were made of wood, and called trusses. Few of them existed before railways. The large rivers and estuaries were crossed in horse-boats, a trip more dangerous than an Atlantic voyage now is. A few smaller rivers had wooden truss bridges. Although originally invented by Leonardo da Vinci, in the sixteenth century, they were reinvented by American carpenters. Some of Burr’s bridges are still standing after more than one hundred years’ use. This shows what wood can do when not overstrained and protected from weather and fire.
The coming of railways required a stronger type of bridge to carry concentrated loads, and the Howe truss, with vertical iron rods, was invented, capable of 150-foot spans.
About 1868 iron bridges began to take the place of wooden bridges. Die-forged eyebars and pin connections allowed of longer panels and longer spans. One of the first long-span bridges was a single-track railway bridge of 400-foot span over the Ohio at Cincinnati, which was considered to be a great achievement in 1870.
The Kinzua viaduct, 310 feet high and over half a mile long, belongs to this era. It is the type of the numerous high viaducts now so common.
About 1885 a new material was given to engineers, having greater strength and tenacity than iron, and commercially available from its low cost. This is basic steel. After many experiments, the proper proportions of carbon, phosphorus, sulphur, and manganese were ascertained, and uniformity resulted. The open-hearth process is now generally used. This new chemical metal, for such it is, is fifty per cent. stronger than iron, and can be tied in a knot when cold.
The effect of improved devices and the use of steel is shown by the weights of the 400-foot Ohio River iron bridge, built in 1870, and a bridge at the same place, built in 1886.
The bridge of 1870 was of iron, had panels twelve feet long, and its height was forty-five feet, and span 400 feet.
The bridge of 1886 was of steel, had panels thirty feet long, and its height was eighty feet. Its span was 550 feet. The weights of the two were nearly alike.
The cantilever design, which is a revival of a very ancient type, came into use. The great Forth Bridge, in Scotland, 1600-foot span, is of this style, as are the 500-foot spans at Poughkeepsie, and now a new one is being designed to cross the St. Lawrence near Quebec, of 1800-foot span.
This is probably near the economic limit of cantilever construction, but the suspension bridge can be extended much farther, as it carries no dead weight of compression members.
The Niagara Suspension Bridge, of 810-foot span, built by Roebling, in 1852, and the Brooklyn Bridge, of 1600 feet, built by Roebling and his son, twenty years after, marked a wonderful advance in bridge design.
Thirty years later, when a new bridge of 1600 feet was wanted to cross another part of the East River at New York, the same lines of construction were followed, and they will be followed in the 2700-foot span, designed to cross the North River some time in the present century. The only radical advance is the use of a better steel than could be had in earlier days.
Steel-arched bridges are now scientifically designed. Such are the new Niagara Bridge, of 840-foot span, and the Alexandra Bridge at Paris.