454 Notes of the Month on [OcT. 



carriages, when one of those tremendous machines was close upon them, 

 flying at the rate of sixteen miles an hour, and with so little notice, that 

 nothing but the Duke of Wellington's quick eye, and his crying out, could 

 have prevented its crashing over the whole group. All they could do 

 was to run in all directions for their lives ! Mr. Calcraft and Prince 

 Esterhazy one way, others in another. Mr.Holmes could escape only 

 by clinging to the car, which unfortunately Mr. Huskisson attempted, 

 but was not in time to get out of the way of the flying engine ; which 

 does not appear to have stopped for any of them. 



Now, undoubtedly, there was some mismanagement, or extreme neg- 

 ligence in all this, which ought to have attracted the notice of the 

 coroner. Then we are told that when the attempt was made to get 

 into the car there were no means, the steps were not there ; in fact, that 

 there was no more provision for accident than there would be in a ship 

 which put to sea without boats. Yet on such a state of preparation we 

 are quite satisfied that a jury might have made some remarks in their ver- 

 dict. Of course, the directors and machine-people are nervous on the sub- 

 ject, and wish the world to believe the accident to have been quite inevi- 

 table. Yet it seems to us to have been no more inevitable than any 

 other mischief, from a stage-coach in the hands of a rash driver, or from 

 an over-drove ox, or a horse left loose in the streets to gallop over whom 

 he likes. We should have desired to know why the engineer of the 

 Rocket if that was the name of the pursuing engine did not instantly 

 stop, or at least moderate its speed, when he saw the road covered with 

 persons. According to the account, it seems to have dashed on without 

 stop or stay ; and we have to return him no thanks for its not having 

 crushed the whole half dozen or dozen to powder. All this, we think, 

 would have drawn a question from us, if we had been on the jury. 



But it is to be hoped that the directors, though they may have been 

 warned by no deodand, will have the wisdom to provide against the 

 recurrence of those horrid accidents. The expedient of feelers, or 

 wheels in front, has been proposed, to prepare them to stop when any 

 object may lie in their way. Something of the kind must be contrived. 

 The danger is the velocity. What human speed could get out of the 

 way of a velocity of thirty-three miles an hour, or of the half of thirty- 

 three ? or what force could stand against it ? We might as well stand 

 against a thunderbolt. The invention is admirable ; and it may be made 

 an inexhaustible source of public benefit. But unless the directors wish 

 to baffle their own labour, and make this great invention an object of 

 public terror, they will look to the prevention of every thing that can 

 endanger the public safety. 



St. John Long's miraculous cures have set the whole faculty in a 

 flame ; and unless it shall go hard with him at the Old Bailey, we have 

 no doubt that before a year is over we shall see him in his coach and 

 four. He is a quack by common consent, and in all ages such have 

 thriven; for in all ages medicine has been a problem; the regular 

 physician little more than an experimentalist after all ; and the question 

 has merely lain between the experimentalist who writes the worst 

 Latin on earth, and the experimentalist who can write no language 

 whatever. 



In this race the charlatan must often win, for in the first place he 

 runs light : he has no character for science to lose, no solemn authority 



