The earl or duke, whose dignity formerly compelled him to post in a coupe and
four, at a cost of some five or six shillings a mile, and an immense
consumption of horse-flesh, wax-lights, and landladies' curtsies on the road,
now takes his place unnoticed in a first-class carriage next to a gentleman
who travels for a great claret and champagne house, and opposite another
going down express to report a railway meeting at Birmingham for a morning
paper. If you see a lady carefully and courteously escorted to a carriage
marked "engaged," on a blackboard, it is probably not a countess but the wife
of one of the principal officers of the company. A bishop in a greatcoat
creates no sensation; but a tremendous rush of porters and superintendents
towards one carriage, announces that a director or well-known engineer is
about to take his seat. In fact, civility to all, gentle and simple, is the
rule introduced by the English railway system; every porter with a number on
his coat is, for the time, the passenger's servant. Special attention is
bestowed on those who are personally known, and no one can grumble at that.
Some people, who have never visited the continent, or only visited it for
pleasure, travelling at their leisure, make comparisons with the railways of
France and Germany, unfavourable to the English system. Our railways are
dearer than the foreign, so is our government,--we make both ourselves; but
compare the military system of the continental railways; the quarter of an
hour for admission before the starting of the train, during which, if too
early or too late, you are locked out; the weighing of every piece of
baggage; the lordly commanding airs of all the officials if any relaxation of
rules be required; the insouciance with which the few porters move about,
leaving ladies and gentlemen to drag their own luggage;--compare all this with
the rapid manner in which the loads of half-a-dozen cabs, driving up from
some other railway at the last moment, are transferred to the departing
Express; compare the speed, the universal civility, attention, and honesty,
that distinguish our railway travelling, and you cannot fail to come to the