the hounds near Bletchley or Rugby, as calmly as we engage a cab to go a
mile; we consider twenty miles an hour disgustingly slow, and grumble awfully
at a delay of five minutes in a journey of a hundred miles. Millions have
been spent in order to save an hour and a half between London and Liverpool;
yet there are plenty of men not much past thirty who remember when all
respectable plain practical common sense men looked upon the project for a
railway between London and Birmingham as something very wild if not very
wicked; and who remember too, that in winter the journey from London to
Liverpool often occupied them twenty-two hours, costing 4 pounds inside and 2
pounds out, besides having to walk up the steepest hills in Derbyshire,--the
same journey which is now completed in six hours at a cost of 2 pounds 5s.,
and in twelve hours for 16s. 9d., by the Parliamentary train in an enclosed
carriage.

It may be perhaps a useful wholesome lesson to those who are in the habit of
accepting as their just due--without thought, without thankfulness--the last
best results of the industry and ingenuity of centuries, if, before entering
the massive portals of Euston Station, we dig up a few passages of the early
history of railways from dusty Blue Books and forgotten pamphlets.

In 1826, the project of a railway from Liverpool to Manchester came before a
Committee of the House of Commons, and, after a long investigation, the
principle was approved, but the bill thrown out in consequence of defects in
the survey. The promoters rested their case entirely on a goods' traffic, to
be conveyed at the rate of six or seven miles an hour. The engineer was
George Stephenson, the father of the railway system, a man of genius, who,
although he clearly foresaw the ultimate results of his project, had neither
temper nor tact enough to conciliate the ignorant obstinacy of his opponents;
in fact, he was a very bad witness and a very great man. It is curious, in
reading the evidence, to observe the little confidence the counsel for the