themselves must have been before stage-coaches became common. We read in Roderick Random of the dinner being prepared for the waggon people just as it awaits the coming in of the coach in the present day. Joey would not be one to hurry off his passengers in a quarter of an hour, as they do now; no horn to sound then just as the best dishes appeared. But the system has beaten itself; not, half the people stay to dine now that did formerly: you are scarcely seated before you hear the announcement "coach ready." They cannot let well alone. Next come the old carriers' carts-rickety vehicles, that poke their way from village to town about twice a week ; sometimes carrying two or three passengers, and giving some old woman or other a help on the road with her butterbasket. Oh how I love to see these old-fashioned conveyances winding along the green lanes of merry England, their grey, rent, and weather-beaten tilts, rocking above the tops of the hawthorn hedges, the crack of the whip, and the " gee whoa" of the drivers ringing over the quiet fields. But they are daily dwindling away, and I am (perhaps foolishly) regretting the change. To me, however, they are fraught with pleasant reminiscences, little simple adventures, and boyish incidents, that are perchance, after all, only sweet because they are gone. Well, I have journeyed by them all, have floated drowsily along in the slow-moving market-boat, or little packet drawn by its single horse, been shook in the ponderous waggon, slept all night on the straw, and eaten my breakfast with "Joey." I have rode home by the village carrier in the sweet mornings of summer, when I could alight and gather a handful of flowers, and overtake him again without hurrying, or stop and look for birds' nests in the hedges that were white and fragrant with the blossoming hawthorn; I have rolled along the rapid and almost breathless railways, shot up the rivers in the swift steamers, and been tossed all night on the stormy sea, sat behind four good horses on the stage-coach, and after all must confess, that I dearly love the old Customs of Travelling. 36 RAILWAY TRAVELLING. "Now there is nothing gives a man such spirits, And merely for the sake of its own merits; At the great end of travel-which is driving." Byron's Don Juan. ASSUREDLY we cannot now complain of the flight of Time, since we have so many inventions for treading hard upon his heels. The genius of man has, in many instances, gained the mastery over the elements: we no longer hear that "The King said sail, and the wind said no;" for now thump goes the steam-engine, and away glides the ponderous vessel, with the wind and tide waging war in her teeth. Ariel need no longer sing "Full fathom five thy father lies ;" for the diving-bell would speedily reach him, and all the sooner if his bones were made of coral. Where only the eagle once soared, Monk Mason now studies, he being one of the few authors who "Into the heaven of heavens has presumed, (An earthly guest) and drawn empyreal air." What would our forefathers have thought had they been told, that within a few years we should be dragged at the tail of an engine at the rate of thirty miles an hour? that we should be hurried through the very bowels of the hills up which they have so often panted, and led on only by fire and water, clear a deep darkness at which they would have quaked,—a cavern that extended for a mile or two under the earth, and would be passed in twice the number of minutes. What would the highwayman of the olden time think now, could he arise and view that street of carriages, bearing inhabitants who would out-number the population of many an English village? Turpin and his Black Bess would stand aghast : his "Deliver or die," would be lost amid the rumbling of wheels, and his favourite steed dead-beaten ere he could get alongside to vent a volley of oaths. Even fearful old ladies would shake their silk purses at him in triumph, and children point their pop-guns at the grim old robber with a malicious grin. The old market-boats and creaking stagewaggons that we now pass on the road, seem to move like tortoises, compared with the mad gallop of the railway-carriages. The engine appears like some unearthly monster, that never once breathes during his journey, but is ready to burst at the end of the race, and upheaves the pent steam from his iron nostrils with louder roarings than the fabled dragons of old. He is fed on fire, and shod with iron, and death is the doom of all he tramples upon. The poetry of travelling is gone, the romance of road side adventure is at an end: in vain will the modern novelist attempt to distinguish his heroine in the passing train, forms and faces glide by like the mingled colours on a schoolboy's whipping-top,—an amalgamated mass of hues which the rapid motion seems to blend into one. Elopements may now be made in safety, if the lovers can only secure the first train; asthmatical old guardians can never give chase the rapidity with which the vehicles move will prevent the short-winded from breathing: no being overtaken by brothers; duelling and changing horses, and separate rooms, are at an end, our light literature must now become woven with steam, our incidents must arise from blows-up, and love be made over broken legs; while here and there the novelist will have to record the falling in of a tunnel, the only chance left "for a touch at the sublime." The good old days of chance courtship have vanished: if a lady happened to let her glove fall from the coach, there was an opening for some gallant to leap off and return it with a good grace. But now there is no stopping; one might as well call upon the wind as upon the conductor to check the speed of his fiery dragon; 'tis as much as the guard can do to make him hear with his shrill whistle : ere one can say I my hat's blown off," we have shot a mile a-head, and the conductor mourns the accident at the next station; and there is no lack of sympathy at the distance of thirty miles. The tables within the carriages are like those which held the feasts of the enchanters: whatever is laid upon them less weighty than a brick, is whisked away by a viewless spirit, and carried you wot not whither. Wo be unto the wight that layeth down his gloves, handkerchief, or umbrella-that unlooseneth his pocket-book, to spread out his letters, for they will be given as a prey unto the winds, unless he carrieth his own curtaining, or is rich enough to travel in a first-class carriage. Then there are those gloomy tunnels opening their grim portals to receive us, and darkening around us like the valley and shadow of death. You are immersed within the bowels of a black cavern, - the groaning monster which has borne you away utters his most hellish moans in the darkness,-flakes of fire here and there flutter along the low-browed vault,—the earth seems rocking beneath, while one dull, prolonged echo |