A Plea for Gas Lamps

Cities given, the problem was to light them. How to conduct individual citizens about the burgess-warren, when once heaven had withdrawn its leading luminary? or—since we live in a scientific age—when once our spinning planet has turned its back upon the sun? The moon, from time to time, was doubtless very helpful; the stars had a cheery look among the chimney-pots; and a cresset here and there, on church or citadel, produced a fine pictorial effect, and, in places where the ground lay unevenly, held out the right hand of conduct to the benighted. But sun, moon, and stars abstracted or concealed, the night-faring inhabitant had to fall back—we speak on the authority of old prints—upon stable lanthorns two stories in height. Many holes, drilled in the conical turret-roof of this vagabond Pharos, let up spouts of dazzlement into the bearer’s eyes; and as he paced forth in the ghostly darkness, carrying his own sun by a ring about his finger, day and night swung to and fro and up and down about his footsteps. Blackness haunted his path; he was beleaguered by goblins as he went; and, curfew being struck, he found no light but that he travelled in throughout the township.

有了城市，问题就是怎样照亮它们。一旦上天收回了它那盏领路的大灯——或者，既然我们生活在科学的时代，不妨说：一旦我们这颗旋转的行星背过身去不再对着太阳——又该怎样引导一个个市民穿行在这市镇的兔窝里呢？月亮时不时地自然帮了大忙；星星在烟囱帽之间也显得挺有精神；教堂或城堡上偶尔有一只火篮，产生出很好的画面效果，在地面高低不平的地方，也向夜行的人伸出一只引路的右手。可是，日、月、星辰一旦隐去或被遮住，夜里出门的居民——我们这样说，是以老版画为依据的——就只好退而求其次，依靠两层楼那么高的马厩灯笼了。这座流动灯塔的圆锥形塔顶上钻了许多孔，向提灯人的眼睛喷出一股股耀眼的光；他踏着鬼影幢幢的黑暗往前走，用手指上的一只环拎着自己的太阳，白昼和黑夜便在他的脚步周围来回摇荡、上下颠簸。黑暗追逐着他的路途；他一路走，一路被妖魔包围；而宵禁的钟声一响，整座市镇里除了他随身带着的那点光，就再也找不到别的光了。

Closely following on this epoch of migratory lanthorns in a world of extinction, came the era of oil-lights, hard to kindle, easy to extinguish, pale and wavering in the hour of their endurance. Rudely puffed the winds of heaven; roguishly clomb up the all-destructive urchin; and, lo! in a moment night re-established her void empire, and the cit groped along the wall, suppered but bedless, occult from guidance, and sorrily wading in the kennels. As if gamesome winds and gamesome youths were not sufficient, it was the habit to sling these feeble luminaries from house to house above the fairway. There, on invisible cordage, let them swing! And suppose some crane-necked general to go speeding by on a tall charger, spurring the destiny of nations, red-hot in expedition, there would indubitably be some effusion of military blood, and oaths, and a certain crash of glass; and while the chieftain rode forward with a purple coxcomb, the street would be left to original darkness, unpiloted, unvoyageable, a province of the desert night.

紧跟着这个在一片熄灭的世界里四处游荡的灯笼时代，来到的是油灯的时代：难点燃，易熄灭，在苦苦支撑的时刻也是苍白而摇曳的。天上的风粗鲁地吹着；那无所不毁的顽童淘气地爬上去；于是，看呐！转眼之间，黑夜又重新建立起她那空无的帝国，市民只好摸着墙走，吃过了晚饭却找不到床，失去了一切指引，狼狈地在阴沟里蹚水。好像淘气的风和淘气的少年还不够似的，当时的习惯，竟是把这些微弱的灯光从这家到那家悬挂在大路的上空。就让它们挂在看不见的绳子上荡来荡去吧！假如有一位长脖子的将军骑着高头大马飞驰而过，正催促着各国的命运，急不可耐地赶路，那就免不了要流点军人的血，骂上几句，玻璃也会哗啦一声碎掉；当这位首领顶着一个紫色的鸡冠继续前进时，这条街就会被留给原初的黑暗，无人引航，无法通行，成为黑夜荒漠中的一个行省。

The conservative, looking before and after, draws from each contemplation the matter for content. Out of the age of gas lamps he glances back slightingly at the mirk and glimmer in which his ancestors wandered; his heart waxes jocund at the contrast; nor do his 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 circumstance, becoming its own birthright. The work of Prometheus had advanced by 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.

保守的人瞻前顾后，从两边的观察中都能找到让自己满意的理由。他从煤气灯的时代回头轻蔑地一瞥，看见祖先们曾在其中徘徊的昏暗与微光；对比之下，他心里乐滋滋的；嘴里也免不了唱上一段最高雅的诗，赞美进步和中庸之道。当煤气灯第一次沿着一座城市铺展开来，在黄昏时分为那些善于观察的鸟儿描绘出城市的轮廓时，一个新的时代便为交际和集体娱乐开始了，而且开始得合乎礼数，成了它与生俱来的权利。普罗米修斯的事业又向前迈了一大步。人类和他们的晚宴不再听凭几英里海雾的摆布；日落不再使散步的街道变得空空荡荡；白昼可以随每个人的心意延长。城里人有了自己的星星，驯服的、家养的星星。

God bless him, indeed! For the term of his twilight diligence is near at hand; and for not much longer shall we watch him speeding up the street and, at measured intervals, knocking another luminous hole into the dusk. The Greeks would have made a noble myth of such an one; how he distributed starlight, and, as soon as the need was over, re-collected it; and the little bull’s-eye, which was his instrument, and held enough fire to kindle a whole parish, would have been fitly commemorated in the legend. Now, like all heroic tasks, his labours draw towards apotheosis, and in the light of victory himself shall disappear. For another advance has been effected. Our tame stars are to come out in future, not one by one, but all in a body and at once. A sedate electrician somewhere in a back office touches a spring—and behold! from one end to another of the city, from east to west, from the Alexandra to the Crystal Palace, there is light! Fiat Lux, says the sedate electrician. What a spectacle, on some clear, dark nightfall, from the edge of Hampstead Hill, when in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the design of the monstrous city flashes into vision—a glittering hieroglyph many square miles in extent; and when, to borrow and debase an image, all the evening street-lamps burst together into song! Such is the spectacle of the future, preluded the other day by the experiment in Pall Mall. Star-rise by electricity, the most romantic flight of civilisation; the compensatory benefit for an innumerable array of factories and bankers’ clerks. To the artistic spirit exercised about Thirlmere, here is a crumb of consolation; consolatory, at least, to such of them as look out upon the world through seeing eyes, and contentedly accept beauty where it comes.

上帝确实保佑他吧！因为他在暮色中勤劳的日子快要到头了；我们再也看不了多久，看他沿着街道飞跑，每隔一段距离就在暮色里敲开一个发光的洞。希腊人会为这样一个人编出一个高贵的神话：他怎样分发星光，一到不再需要时又怎样把它收回；还有那只小小的牛眼灯，那是他的工具，里面盛着足以点燃整个教区的火，也会在传说中得到应有的纪念。如今，像一切英雄的劳作一样，他的劳作正走向神化，而在胜利的光芒中，他本人将要消失。因为又一项进步已经实现了。我们那些驯服的星星，将来不再一颗一颗地出来，而是全体一齐出现。某间后屋里一位沉稳的电气师按一下开关——瞧！从城市的这一头到那一头，从东到西，从亚历山德拉宫到水晶宫，一片光明！“要有光”，那位沉稳的电气师说。在某个晴朗而黑暗的傍晚，站在汉普斯特德山的边上看去，那将是怎样的奇观啊：转瞬之间，眨眼之间，这座巨大城市的图案在眼前闪现出来——一个方圆许多平方英里的闪闪发光的象形文字；借用并贬损一个意象来说，那时所有傍晚的街灯都一齐放声歌唱！这就是未来的景象，前几天在蓓尔美尔街的试验已经为它奏响了序曲。用电让星星升起，这是文明最浪漫的一次飞翔；是对数不清的工厂和银行职员的一种补偿。对于那些为瑟尔米尔湖操心的艺术家来说，这倒是一点安慰——至少对那些用明亮的眼睛看世界、在美出现的地方就欣然接受它的人来说，是一点安慰。

But the conservative, while lauding progress, is ever timid of innovation; his is the hand upheld to counsel pause; his is the signal advising slow advance. The word electricity now sounds the note of danger. In Paris, at the mouth of the Passage des Princes, in the place before the Opera portico, and in the Rue Drouot at the Figaro office, a new sort of urban star now shines out nightly, horrible, unearthly, obnoxious to the human eye; a lamp for a nightmare! Such a light as this should shine only on murders and public crime, or along the corridors of lunatic asylums, a horror to heighten horror. To look at it only once is to fall in love with gas, which gives a warm domestic radiance fit to eat by. Mankind, you would have thought, might have remained content with what Prometheus stole for them and not gone fishing the profound heaven with kites to catch and domesticate the wildfire of the storm. Yet here we have the levin brand at our doors, and it is proposed that we should henceforward take our walks abroad in the glare of permanent lightning. A man need not be very superstitious if he scruple to follow his pleasures by the light of the Terror that Flieth, nor very epicurean if he prefer to see the face of beauty more becomingly displayed. That ugly blinding glare may not improperly advertise the home of slanderous Figaro, which is a backshop to the infernal regions; but where soft joys prevail, where people are convoked to pleasure and the philosopher looks on smiling and silent, where love and laughter and deifying wine abound, there, at least, let the old mild lustre shine upon the ways of man.

可是，保守的人一边赞美进步，一边又总是害怕革新；他举起的手是劝人暂停的手，他发出的信号是建议缓慢前进的信号。“电”这个字眼，如今听来是危险的警号。在巴黎，在王子廊的入口，在歌剧院门廊前的广场上，在德鲁奥街《费加罗报》的报馆门前，一种新的城市星星如今每晚亮起来，可怕、怪异、刺人的眼睛；一盏为噩梦而设的灯！这样的光，只应该照在谋杀和公开的罪行上，或者照在疯人院的走廊里，作为一种加深恐怖的恐怖。只要看它一眼，就会爱上煤气灯，它给出一种温暖的、家常的光辉，适合在它下面吃饭。人们本来会以为，人类有了普罗米修斯为他们偷来的东西就该满足了，用不着再放风筝去深邃的天空里钓鱼，把暴风雨中的野火捉来驯养。可是如今，那闪电的火把已经到了我们门口，有人还提议，从今以后我们出去散步，都要在永久的闪电的强光下。一个人用不着十分迷信，也会对借着“那飞来的惊骇”的光去追求自己的乐趣感到犹豫；用不着十分讲究享乐，也会宁愿看到美人的脸被照得更合宜一些。那种难看的、刺眼的强光，用来给专爱造谣的《费加罗报》的馆址做招牌，倒也不算不恰当，那地方本来就是地狱的后店；可是，在温柔的欢乐盛行的地方，在人们被召集来寻欢作乐、哲人在一旁微笑着默默观看的地方，在爱情、欢笑和使人如神的美酒充溢的地方，至少在那里，就让那古老而柔和的光辉照在人们走过的路上吧。