little ceremony as a daylaborer. We employ the best mechanical engineers
that we can find to look after the repairs of our engines and cars; while
the road, which is more important, and upon the good condition of which we
have seen that the success or failure of a railway as a commercial
enterprise may depend, is handed over to some ignorant fellow whose only
qualifications are industry and obedience.

There are no unmixed evils in this world. The impecuniosity of American
railways, besides causing the bad results which we have described, has had
a good effect upon the training of American engineers. Being obliged to do
a great deal with a little money, they have steered clear of those enormous
extravagances which have characterized the works of such engineers as the
late Mr. Brunel, colossal less in proportions than cost. It has been well
observed, that there was more talent shown on a certain division of the
New-York and Erie Railway, in avoiding the necessity for viaducts, than
could possibly have been exhibited in constructing them. This remark is a
key to the difference between the old English and the American systems of
civil engineering. The one is for show, the other for use. We say the _old_
English system, because a better practice has now arisen. Cost is looked to
as well as splendor; and there is no engineer now in England whose
reputation, would sustain him in constructing such monuments of
extravagance as the Great Western Railway or the Britannia Bridge. American
civil engineers have not been fairly treated. The wretched construction of
many of our railways, and the uneconomical condition of all, have been cast
against them by their English brethren as a reproach. But the faults of
construction, we have shown, are attributable to another cause. No engineer
of standing would lend himself to many of the schemes that have been pushed
through in the West. But in order to build a "cheap" road, it is only
necessary to get a "cheap" engineer, and that is a commodity easily picked
up. If their ignorance and blunders tarnish the fair fame of the