Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Progress, Railways, Industry, Universities, Education, Utilitarianism, Materialism

    Ironically rejoices at the news that the Great Western Railway Company and University of Oxford have agreed on the construction of a railway factory at Oxford. Views this as the 'conquest of mediæval sentiment by modern principles, of spiritual idealism by material utility'. Anticipates the eclipse of Oxford's spires by 'factory chimneys, pointing higher towards heaven', the coating of the moss-covered 'ecclesiastical structures' with soot, and the breakage of the 'gloomy silence and melancholy repose' of academic life by 'gangs of jolly British workmen', and the smothering of the 'seat of learning' by a 'hive of industry'.