London to John O Groat's. 5 



comments, good or bad. At the end of the journey, be 

 it at midnight or daybreak, not a man nor a woman he 

 has driven safely at the rate of forty miles an hour 

 thinks or cares what becomes of him, or separates him 

 in thought from the great iron monster he mounts. 

 Not the smock-frocked man, 'getting out of the forward- 

 most Third, with his stick and bundle, thinks of him, or 

 stops a moment to see him back out and turn into the 

 stable. 



With all the practical advantages of this machine 

 propulsion at bird speed over space, it confounds and 

 swallows up the poetical aspects and picturesque scene- 

 ries that were the charm of old-fashioned travelling in 

 the country. The most beautiful landscapes rotate 

 around a locomotive axis confusedly. Green pastures 

 and yellow wheat fields are in a whirl. Tall and 

 venerable trees get into the wake of the same motion, 

 and the large, pied cows ruminating in their shade, 

 seem to lie on the revolving arc of an indefinite circle. 

 The views dissolve before their best aspect is caught by 

 the eye. The flowers, like Eastern beauties, can only 

 be seen " half hidden and half revealed," in the general 

 unsteadiness. As for bees, you cannot hear or see them 

 at all ; and the songs of the happiest birds are drowned 

 altogether by the clatter of a hundred wheels on the 

 metal track. If there are any poor, flat, or fen lands, 



