occasioned by famine? There is nothing plentiful in the land but ruin! Employment is scarce—money is scarce—the people are being thinned—farms are being consolidated—bullock land is progressing—
“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where cows accumulate, and men decay.”
For some long time there had been a conflict of opinion as to the merits of different sized gauges for railways. Brunel, the magnificent, advocated a width of seven feet, and practised it on the Great Western; others wished for something far more modest. Great was the wrangling over this “battle of the gauges,” and a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the matter. They gave in their Report on 30 May, and the question was settled by “An Act for regulating the Gauge of Railways” (9 and 10 Vic., c. 57—passed 18 Aug., 1846) by which it was settled that, in future, all Railway lines in England were to be 4 feet 8½ in. wide, and in Ireland, the width was to be 5 ft. 3 in.
By the way, Railway surveyors were paid well, and almost everyone that had ever dragged a chain posed as a surveyor. As a sample—on 23 Ap. is reported the case of White v. Koe and Maun—where a witness said “Levellers are always well paid. I have received, before this £10 a mile, and I could level from seven to eight miles a day. These are not extraordinary terms. I had to find hands to help me. I had three men at 7s. a day each.”
On 22 June poor Haydon, the painter, committed suicide. He was extremely egotistical, and nothing could persuade him that he was not the best painter of his time. His fixed idea was that he was without a peer—but no one else thought so. His diary is very sad reading. Here is an entry (Ap. 13) relative to the exhibition of his picture, “The Banishment of Aristides”: “Receipts £1 3s. 6d. An advertisement of a finer description could not have been written to catch the public; but not a shilling more was added to the receipts. They rush by thousands to see Tom Thumb. They push—they fight—they scream—they faint—they cry ‘Help!’ and
‘Murder!’ They see my bills and caravans, but do not read them; their eyes are on them, but their sense is gone. It is an insanity—a rabies furor—a dream—of which I would not have believed Englishmen could have been guilty.” He even wrote to the Times about it: “General Tom Thumb, last week, received 12,000 people, who paid him £600; B. R. Haydon, who has devoted 42 years to elevate their taste, was honoured by the visits of 133½, producing £5 13s. 6d., being a reward for painting two of his finest works, ‘Aristides and Nero.’ Horace Vernet, La Roche, Ingres, Cornelius, Hess, Snorr, and Scheffer, hasten to this glorious country of fresco and patronage, and grand design, if you have a tender fancy to end your days in a Whig Union.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The last Post Office Bellman—The “Corn Law” Act—Sir Walter Scott’s monument—The Irish famine—The Duke of Wellington’s statue—Gun cotton—Introduction of ether—Model dwelling houses—Baths and Wash-houses—Smithfield Cattle market—“The Bull Fight of Smithfield”—The first submarine telegraph.
The Illustrated London News, of 27 June, gives us “The Letter Carrier’s Last Knell.—We have just lost another of what poor Thomas Hood called, ‘Those evening bells.’ The Postmaster General having issued his fiat for the abolition of ‘ringing bells’ by the Letter Carriers, the last knell was rung out on the evening of Wednesday last; and, as a memorial of the departure of what appeared to most persons, a very useful practice, our artist has sketched a Letter Carrier, on his last evening call at our office; and another hand has appended the following lament:
The Dustman was first to forego his brass clapper,
The Muffinboy speedily followed his shade;
And, now, ’tis the Postman—that double-tongued rapper—
Must give up his Bell for the eve’s promenade.
“Tantæ Animis?’ sage Legislators!
Why rage against trifles like these? Prithee tell,
Why leave the solution to rude commentators,
Who say, that at home, you’ve enough in one Belle?”