— 436 — 



Proni its proximity to London, 'tis indeed a welcome 

 haven of repose — a sanitorium for the wearied Lon- 

 doner, longing for the Sunday or holiday, to tear him- 

 self from the great Babylon of wealth, squalor, trade, 

 intellect and smoke. 



The 3 p. m., express train from the London Bridge, 

 or Victoria Eailway station, rushes you in one hour and 

 twenty minutes past rows of suburban brick cottages, 

 leafy old manors, ivy-mantled chapels, medieval 

 churches, under lofty viaducts, over the fifty-one inter- 

 vening miles between the metropolis and the loved sea- 

 side resort. 



For a western traveller like me, never enamoured 

 of the English style of railway-travel and baggage- 

 checking system, judge of my thankfulness on my 

 emerging safe and unharmed from the dark, sooty, 

 underground tunnel, the Clayton tunnel, near Croydon : 

 Croydon, where only a few days previous had been 

 brought the mangled remains of poor old Mr, Gould. 

 His murderer, Lefroy, whose name was in every mouth, 

 was then yet unconvicted, unhung, unrepresented in 

 Madam Toussaud's Chamber of Horrors, which I was 

 soon to visit. These small locked railway compart- 

 ments, they may be a British institution, but the 

 country has other, has better institutions than this. 

 Possibly when some future Lefroy will have chloro- 

 formed or garotted a peer of the realm, a Lord Mayor, 

 a Bishop, or even a Railway Director — the torch of 

 enquiry will light up this question, and unprotected 

 passengers per rail will cease to be promiscuously 

 locked up in solitary railway compartments with garot- 

 ters aud murderers. Croydon has a population of 58,- 

 000 inhabitants; it was formerly the country residence 

 of the Archbishop of Canterbury. 



At 4.30 p. m. I found myself on the steps of the 

 Grand Hotel, at Brighton, sniffing the salt sea air and 

 gazing at the vast sunlit, sparkling bay, fringed with 

 countless bathing houses, studded by whole fleets of 



