twenty-two millions sterling; which annually earns more than two millions and
a-half for the conveyance of passengers, and merchandise, and live stock; and
which directly employs more than ten thousand servants, beside the tens of
thousands to whom, in mills or mines, in ironworks, in steam-boats and
coasters, it gives indirect employment. What London is to the world, Euston
is to Great Britain: there is no part of the country to which railway
communication has extended, with the exception of the Dover and Southampton
lines, which may not be reached by railway conveyance from Euston station.

The Buckinghamshire lines from Bletchley open the way through Oxford to all
the Western counties, only interrupted by the break of gauge. The
Northampton and Peterborough, from Blisworth, proceeds to the Eastern coast
of Norfolk and Lincoln. At Rugby commences one of several roads to the
North, either by Leicester, Nottingham, and Lincoln, or by Derby and
Sheffield; and at Rugby, too, we may either proceed to Stafford by the direct
route of the Trent Valley, a line which is rendered classical by the memory
of Sir Robert Peel, who turned its first sod with a silver spade and honoured
its opening by a celebrated speech; or we may select the old original line
through Coventry, Birmingham, and Wolverhampton, passing through a network of
little railways leading to Warwick and Leamington, the result of unprofitable
competition. A continuation of the Trent Valley line intersects the Pottery
district, where the cheapest Delft and the most exquisite specimens of China
ware are produced with equal success; and thus we reach Liverpool and
Manchester by the straightest possible line.

At Stafford we can turn off to Shrewsbury and Chester, or again following the
original route arrive at Crewe, the great workshop and railway town of the
London and North Western. Crewe affords an ample choice of routes--1st, to
Leeds by Stockport (with a branch to Macclesfield) and Huddersfield, or from
Leeds to York, or to Harrogate, and so on by the East Coast line through