although in 1662 there were but six public carriages, the number had so increased in a few years after, that one John Crossell, of the Charter House, then one of the wise men of the East, tried his best to write down the new system. He had, it is conjectured, the countenance of the country squires, who dreaded that the facility and cheapness of travelling would too often induce their dames and daughters to visit the metropolis, and unfit them for the homely pleasures of the Hall and the Grange. The tradesmen, too, iu and near London, took it into their heads to consider the existence of such vehicles a public evil, and, in a spirit very much akin to that which has existed in our own times, petitioned King Charles II. and the Privy Council to put an end to the "stage coach nuisance;" but the result of this petition against so important a public convenience was as unsuccessful as every similar attempt made by the few against the welfare of the many must ever ultimately be. The improvement in coach travelling made slow progress during the next half-century. The novels of Fielding and Smollett afford amusing and graphic details of the stages and waggons of their day; but the pencil of Hogarth, will best exhibit the strange contrast there existed between the lumbering vehicle of the reign of George I., and the dashing equipage that, in the time of his fourth successor, accomplished the distance between London and Brighton within five hours. In 1742 the Oxford stage-coach left town at seven o'clock in the morning, and reached Uxbridge at midday. It arrived at High Wycombe at five in the evening, where it rested for the night, and proceeded at the same rate for the seat of learning on the morrow. Here then were ten hours consumed each day in passing over twenty-seven miles, and nearly two days in performing what is now accomplished in as many hours. Thirty years ago, the Holyhead mail left London, viâ Oxford, at eight o'clock at night, and arrived in Shrewsbury between ten and eleven the following night, being twenty-seven hours to one hundred and sixty-two miles. This distance was done without the least difficulty, in 1832, in sixteen hours and a quarter. At that period, and for the five or six following years, stage-coach travelling attained in this country most astonishing perfection. Competition had reduced charges to their lowest level, and brought elegance, comfort, and expedition to their highest. The great Northern, the Western, the Oxford, and the Brighton roads were covered with splendid public conveyances. On the last, no less than twenty-five ran during the summer. The fastest were the Red Rover, the Age, and the Telegraph, all horsed in the most admirable manner, and driven in many instances by men of rank and education. The Edinburgh mail performed the distance, 400 miles, in forty hours; and one might have set his watch by it at any point of the journey. The Exeter day coach, the Herald, ran over her ground, 173 miles, both hilly and difficult, in twenty hours; the Diligence from Paris to Calais requiring, for the same distance, forty-eight hours in summer, and from fifty to sixty in winter. Thus it was, before steam, with its irresistible power, came to revolutionise the travelling world, that we journeyed through the picturesque scenery of our own beautiful island, enjoying the rural comforts of its road-side hostelries, admiring its ancient cities, and priding ourselves on the industry and bustle of its manufacturing towns. How spiritedly does Boz recall to our recollection the departed glory of the turnpike road. "The coach was none of your steady-going, yokel coaches, but a swaggering, rakish, disreputable, London coach; up all night, and lying by all day, and leading a devil of a life. It cared no more for Salisbury than if it had been a hamlet. It : rattled noisily through the best streets, defied the cathedral, took the worst corners sharpest, went cutting in every where, making every thing get out of its way; and spun along the open country road, blowing a lively defiance out of its key bugle, as its last glad parting legacy. The four grays skimmed along the bugle was in as high spirits as the grays; the coachman chimed in sometimes with his voice, the wheels hummed cheerfully in unison: the brass work on the harness was an orchestra of little bells; and thus, as they went clinking, jingling, rattling, smoothly on, the whole concern, from the buckles of the leaders' coupling-reins, to the hand of the hind boot, was one great instrument of music.' Γ No. II. THE RAIL-ROAD. When the mail coaches, after the practice- and improvement of a few years, had gradually attained the speed of ten or twelve miles an hour, great was the self-laudation of the age upon its own nimbleness as compared to the slow gouty-paced travelling of its ancestors. It was a subject on which the eighteenth century, especially when drawing near its end, was mightily facetious and grandiloquent, always wondering what its dear departed grandames would say if they could only peep out of their graves and see the portentous rate at which it was flying along the road, even without the necessity of making a will beforehand. But now, how are the tables turned! the fable of the seven-leagued boots, used by Jack in the fairy tale, were evidently only a symbol, at once marking and veiling the discovery of the steam-engine, just as Friar Bacon hid his invention of gunpowder under a jumble of words, being equally unwilling to lose the credit of his knowledge, or to impart it to others. We, therefore, beg leave to put in Jack's claim at once, in case the French or Americans, those universal discoverers of all that has been discovered, should attempt to defraud the giant-killing hero of the glory that belongs to him. There is something not a little flattering to our hopes of future improvement, when we look at the humble origin of railway travelling. Who that sees one of the present splendid trains flying along at the rate of twenty or thirty miles an hour, would imagine that it was the lineal descendant of a coal-cart, slowly drawn along a wooden tram by a single horse? And yet such is the bare fact, stript of all exaggeration. This simple contrivance was adopted about two-hundred years ago, to facilitate the drawing of coals from the pits to the places of shipment in the neighbourhood of Newcastleupon-Tyne; the waggon, which went upon small wheels, contained from two to three tons of coal, and was provided with a flange, or projecting rim, for the purpose of keeping it in contact with the rail. From time to time various improvements were made upon this humble beginning, without, however, deviating from the general principle; stone-supports were substituted for the wooden sleepers, and, to make the pull easier for the horse, in steep ascents, or in the case of sharp curves, thin plates of malleable iron were nailed on the surface of the rails, the greater smoothness of the metal facilitating the draught. Then cast-iron rods were introduced; but this experiment, seemingly so obvious, was, after all, the result of accident, as perhaps may be said of many other discoveries for which individuals have obtained all the fame that belongs to invention. It seems that in 1767 the price of iron became very low, and, in order to keep the furnaces at work, it was resolved to cast bars, to be laid upon the wooden rails; this would save expense in their repairs; and if any sudden rise in the value of iron should take place, they might be taken up again, and, in the language of the trade, sold as pigs. Excellent as this plan was, when compared with what had been done before, it was soon found to have its disadvantages. The form of the rail was weak, considering the quantity of metal employed upon it, and it allowed dirt and pebbles to be lodged, which impeded the free motion of the carriages, and even made them liable to be thrown out of the track. This, after some minor attempts at improvement, led to the grand invention of edge-rails, which was followed by the use of malleable rods in place of the brittle cast-iron, an ingenious adaptation of rolling machinery having enabled the engineers to give them the requisite form. Hitherto we have seen only animal power used to impel the carriages on a railway; but gravity soon came to be employed as an auxiliary, and in some cases as the sole propelling agent, where the road admitted of an inclined plane, no greater power being required to take a loaded carriage down than to drag it up again. Where the too great steepness of the ground rendered this plan inadmissible, recourse was had to what was called a selfacting inclined plane, by which ingenious contrivance the loaded car in its descent pulled up the empty waggons by means of a rope passed round a wheel at the top of the acclivity. This may be considered as the first chapter in the history of the railway, which, though a simple term, we shall presently see applied to that compound piece of engineering, which includes the steam-engine, the carriages, and the road on which they travel. But we have not yet quite done with the railway itself, properly so called. When experience had once established the fact that iron rails, by lessening the friction, considerably lightened the draught, it will not seem strange that a projector should at last be found to speculate on the advantage of substituting railways for the common road. This was Dr. Anderson. He had no idea of any new locomotive power, but proposed to carry a line of rail. ways by the side of the turnpike roads, along which waggons might pass drawn by horses. Mr. Edgeworth, either borrowing the Doctor's idea, or, as he said, having originated it himself, went a step farther, and in "Nicholson's Journal of the Arts" for March, 1802, suggested that means might be found to enable "stage-coaches to go six miles an hour, and post chaises and gentlemen's travelling-carriages to travel with eight, both with one horse.' But neither of the projectors seemed to have considered how the rail was to be carried on by the side of the turnpike-road when the latter came to run through the towns, or how the carriage was to be moved when the intervention of any steep made farther progress impossible; though one horse might draw a waggon upon a rail, it was quite evident that he could not drag the same weight up a hill along a common highway. As, however, neither of these plans was attempted to be carried into effect, the difficulties in question never came to be tested. While tram-ways had thus been exercising the ingenuity of projectors, a power was growing to maturity, which was destined to change the whole face of the matter. In 1802 it occurred to Messrs. Trevethick and Vivian to take out a patent for a steam-carriage on the public road; and though it does not appear to have been ever actually employed, it led to the experiment being tried on a colliery railway in South Wales. It succeeded but partially, and a fancy having now seized the engineers that a smooth-tired wheel would not adhere sufficiently to the surface of the rail for onward motion, all their ingenuity was employed in removing a difficulty, which did not exist, till after the lapse of a few years, Mr. George Stephenson was fortunate enough to discover that his brethren had been fighting with a shadow. The con struction of the first of the modern, or travelling class of railways, between Darlington and Stockton, on which one horse drew with ease a carriage with twenty six passengers, at the rate of ten miles an hour, afforded an opportunity for testing his invention. Accordingly it was tried, and though the operation was remarkable, its success was not sufficient to attract the public attention. The Titan had not yet attained its full maturity; and when, some time afterwards, the monied men of Manchester and Liverpool employed Mr. Stephenson to construct a railroad for them, they had no dea, as it should seem, of any other motive agent than stationary engines, The question, however, on the completion of the railway, came to be agitated, when these practical men of business, wisely preferring facts to theory offered a reward of five hundred pounds for the best locomotive carriage, capable of fulfilling certain conditions. Their demands were not very exorbitant ten miles an hour was the maximum of speed required, and it is curious enough in the present day to read how even the friends of the locomotive project disclaimed any such NONSENSE as the idea of travelling by steam" at the rate of ten, sixteen, eighteen, twenty miles an hour." It must be acknowledged that these new Frankensteins little understood the tremendous nature of the monster they were calling into existence. At length, on the 8th of October, 1829, a day more justly to be celebrated than even the anniversaries of the Nile or Waterloo,-the trial took place, on a portion of the Liverpool and Manchester railway, prepared for the purpose. Greatly to the surprise of those who a short time before had voted Mr. Stephenson only fit for Bedlam, his carriage went at the rate of thirty miles an hour without a load, and at twenty-four miles an hour when encumbered with three times its own weight, which was thirteen tons. Titan had now triumphed the union of the railway and the locomotive engine was complete; but still the idea of carrying goods was uppermost in men's minds, nor was it till the invention had come into active operation, that its great value as a means of conveying passengers was at all understood. Then, indeed, the truth became gradually developed, and men saw -not a few with fear as well as wonder-the realization of those day-dreams which had been promulgated by Dr. Darwin so early as 1793 : "Soon shall thy arm, unconquer'd STEAM! afar Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear The flying chariot through the fields of air." Botanic Garden, Canto i. 253–289. Well may the reader of these lines exclaim with Macbeth, upon the half achievement of his greatness "Two truths are told, As happy prologues to the swelling act Of the aerial (imperial) theme." At all events, the thirty miles an hour seemed just as absurd in those days, when the idea was first started, as the flying chariot can possibly do to us; and, though the latter may be never realised, it should hardly be set down in the chapter of utter impossibilities. No sooner was the locomotive steam-engine found to answer the expectation of the inventors, than a new impetus was given to the formation of roads, on which they might most effectually exert their agency. Up ascents of any great steepness, it was quite clear, they would not go, the adhesion between the engine-wheels and the rails not being sufficient to ensure the progressive motion of the machine. Ways, therefore, had to be cut through hills where they were not too high, throwing up the earth on either side, or they were to be formed by tunnelling where the height of the ground made that the cheapest and most efficacious mode of working. Sometimes, as in case of narrow valleys, it was found better to carry the road across them upon arches, the expense being less than the more ordinary way of raising an embankment. Latterly, the introduction of another element has threatened to render useless not a few of these ingenious contrivances. It has been proposed, and the experiment is now actually in progress, to lay down hollow pipes or cylinders, and exhaust the air in them, by means of steam engines fixed at certain distances, when the atmospheric pressure, it is expected, will be sufficient to propel the carriages that are connected by means of a rod with the several tubes. The objectors to the plan cry out upon the expense, as well as the great difficulty of carrying it out in frosty weather, and upon an extended line, for they argue that the experiment tried in the neigbourhood of Dublin upon a scale of three miles, goes for nothing, however successful it may have been. They refer to the result to confirm their forebodings; and certainly there is no denying the homely old proverb, that "the proof of the pudding is in the eating;" still, if we must not praise till we have tasted, we have just as little right to blame; and the verdict becomes still more suspicious when, as in this case, it is plain the opinion is given from other interests and predilections. They who have embarked thousands in the present railways may be excused if they are a little incredulous as to the feasibility of the atmospheric scheme. For ourselves, we have in our time seen so many things turn out well that had previously been declared to be impossible, that we are inclined to distrust the sceptics even more than the enthusiasts. Dr. Lardner, we can well remember, proclaimed the utter impossibility of steam-carriages ever going above thirty miles an hour, just as, a few years before, the very friends of Stephenson had ridiculed the idea of a speed that should exceed ten. But the doctor had this advantage; he was really and truly a scientific man, and demonstrated his opinion as irrefragably as any proposition of Euclid, when lo and behold the scorner was again rebuked by fact. In the midst of his jeers, the machine showed it was very possible to double the utmost degree of speed he had allowed. Ibi omnis effusus labor." It is true that this extreme attempt at velocity has not everywhere been repeated, but its being done is quite enough to put a whole battalion of LL.D.'s to the rout; and we therefore abide by our hopes of the atmospheric railway, the rather from not having any shares in the locomotive speculations. If we had, it might materially influence our judgment, as it does that of many other honest folks, great admirers of the things and powers that be. We have now briefly traced the history of the great railway experiment in conjunction with the steam-engine. It might be deemed presumptuous to attempt calculating on what are likely to be the future results of this extraordinary combination; yet it is hardly possible to refrain altogether from some pleasant dreams of the time when by the agency of steam, both on land and water, the prejudices that now separate the various families of mankind shall be worn away, and their various habits so assimilated, that they may all form, if not one people, at least a confederation of nations. That it will do this there can be little doubt, but we think it is destined to do much more; if machinery goes on at its present rapid pace for another century, superseding much of the necessity of human labour, it is quite clear |