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REVERIES ON RAIL-ROADS. 



Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines 



Quos ultra citra que, nequit consistere rectum. HORAT. 



WE live in startling times so many things have come to pass 

 which our grandfathers laughed at the mere mention of, that pro- 

 jects of our own day are no longer received with caution, but their 

 practicability at once admitted, and the sole consideration is the 

 amount of reward to the projectors. 



Hudson Gurney once said that Birmingham was formerly ten 

 miles further from London than in the year 1826 referring to the 

 improvements made in the roads and that he " should not be sur- 

 prised at retiring to rest some night with the knowledge that a sove- 

 reign was worth twenty shillings, on waking the next morning most 

 unexpectedly finding, by the London papers, that it was only worth 

 eighteen." Mr. Brougham's " Schoolmaster" has been very active. 

 He has made a most miraculous exertion with his birch, which may, 

 perhaps, account for much of our present illumination. Had he 

 been equally active in other countries, Mrs. Lushington would not 

 have been so many months in her overland journey from India. 

 Had Sir Charles Dance ever been on that road or Gurney not 

 Hudson Gurney she might have been puffed along by steam as 

 fast as a sun-beam. We do not despair of breakfasting at St. Peters- 

 burgh, and dining the next day with Mrs. Ramsbottom on the walls 

 of China. Gas and steam have only, as yet, commenced their ope- 

 rations; how they will finish, the next age will scarcely be able 

 to tell. Gunpowder and the mitre have had their day ; and steam, 

 it has been predicted, will henceforth govern the world. 



Nothing has unquestionably a greater tendency to contribute to 

 the rapid civilization of a country, and to accelerate the development 

 of its resources, than facility of communication. Even in the dark 

 ages, its utility, better felt than understood, rendered it an object of 

 monopoly even to the church itself. " To build a bridge," says a 

 lively female writer of the present day, " or clear a forest, were 

 deeds of salvation for the next world as for this ; and royal and noble 

 sinners literally paved their way to heaven, and reached the gates of 

 Paradise, by causeways made on earth." 



If, with a philosophic eye, we attentively scan the volume of his- 

 tory, we shall discover that most of the grand climacterics of the 

 world have been ushered in by some great scientific invention or 

 discovery. Thus gunpowder, in the middle ages, broke the barbed 

 ranks of the feudal aristocracy and revolutionized the whole system 

 of war. The art of printing sapped the foundations of the church of 

 Rome, and extended the domain of thought. The mariner's compass 

 led to the discovery of a new continent. But it is in the age in which 

 we live, characterized as it is by its political and economical spirit of 

 reform, that a new principle, a novum organum, has been introduced, 

 the most powerful yet ever wielded by man we allude to the steam- 

 engine. 



To this country, above all others, the steam-engine has procured 



