Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1881 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

A Plea for Gas Lamps. 291
lips refrain from a stave, in the highest style of
poetry, lauding progress and the golden mean.
When gas first spread along a city, mapping it
forth about evenfall for the eye of observant birds,
a new age had begun for sociality and corporate
pleasure-seeking, and begun with proper circum-
stance, becoming its own birthright. The work
of Prometheus had advanced with another
stride. Mankind and its supper parties were no
longer at the mercy of a few miles of sea-fog ;
sundown no longer emptied the promenade ;
and the day was lengthened out to every man's
fancy. The city-folk had stars of their own ;
biddable, domesticated stars.
It is true that these were not so steady, nor
yet so clear, as their originals ; nor indeed was
their lustre so elegant as that of the best wax
candles. But then the gas stars, being nearer
at hand, were more practically efficacious than
Jupiter himself It is true, again, that they did
not unfold their rays with the appropriate