Page 788 - middlemarch

gles of the railway system entered into the affairs of Caleb
Garth, and determined the course of this history with re-
gard to two persons who were dear to him. The submarine
railway may have its difficulties; but the bed of the sea is
not divided among various landed proprietors with claims
for damages not only measurable but sentimental. In the
hundred to which Middlemarch belonged railways were as
exciting a topic as the Reform Bill or the imminent hor-
rors of Cholera, and those who held the most decided views
on the subject were women and landholders. Women both
old and young regarded travelling by steam as presump-
tuous and dangerous, and argued against it by saying that
nothing should induce them to get into a railway carriage;
while proprietors, differing from each other in their argu-
ments as much as Mr. Solomon Featherstone differed from
Lord Medlicote, were yet unanimous in the opinion that in
selling land, whether to the Enemy of mankind or to a com-
pany obliged to purchase, these pernicious agencies must
be made to pay a very high price to landowners for permis-
sion to injure mankind.
But the slower wits, such as Mr. Solomon and Mrs.
Waule, who both occupied land of their own, took a long
time to arrive at this conclusion, their minds halting at the
vivid conception of what it would be to cut the Big Pasture
in two, and turn it into three-cornered bits, which would be
‘nohow;’ while accommodation-bridges and high payments
were remote and incredible.
‘The cows will all cast their calves, brother,’ said Mrs.
Waule, in a tone of deep melancholy, ‘if the railway comes