Now, if at this moment of his victory, while with dust and perspiration on his brow—his exhausted arms dangling just above the panting flanks of his horse, which his friends at each side of the bridle were slowly leading in triumph—a decrepit old woman had hobbled forward, and in the name of Science had told the assembled multitude, that, before she became a skeleton, she and her husband would undertake, instead of 200 miles in ten hours, to go 500—that is to say, that, for every mile “the Squire” had just ridden, she and her old man would go two miles and a half—that she would moreover knit all the way, and that he should take his medicine every hour and read to her just as if they were at home; lastly, that they would undertake to perform their feat either in darkness or in daylight, in sunshine or in storm, “in thunder, lightning, or in rain;”—who, we ask, would have listened to the poor maniac?—and yet how wonderfully would her prediction have been now fulfilled! Nay, waggons of coals and heavy luggage now-a-days fly across Leicestershire faster and farther than Mr. Osbaldestone could go, notwithstanding his condition and that of all his horses.
When railways were first established, every living being gazed at a passing train with astonishment and fear: ploughmen held their breath; the loose horse galloped from it, and then, suddenly stopping, turned round, stared at it, and at last snorted aloud. But the “nine days’ wonder” soon came to an end. As the train now flies through our verdant fields, the cattle grazing on each side do not even raise their heads to look at it; the timid sheep fears it no more than the wind; indeed, the hen-partridge, running with her brood along the embankment of a deep cutting, does not now even crouch as it passes close by her. It is the same with mankind. On entering a railway station, we merely mutter to a clerk in a box where we want to go—say “How much?”—see him horizontally poke a card into a little machine that pinches it—receive our ticket—take our place—read our newspaper—on reaching our terminus drive away perfectly careless of all or of any one of the innumerable arrangements necessary for the astonishing luxury we have enjoyed.
On the practical working of a railway there is no book extant, nor any means open to the public of obtaining correct information on the subject.
Unwilling, therefore, to remain in this state of ignorance respecting the details of the greatest blessing which science has ever imparted to mankind, we determined to make a very short inspection of the practical machinery of one of our largest railways; and having, on application to the Secretary, as also to the Secretary of the Post-Office, been favoured with the slight authorities we required, without companion or attendant we effected our object; and although, under such circumstances, our unbiassed observations were necessarily superficial, we propose, first, to offer to our readers a faint outline of the difficulties attendant upon the construction and maintenance of a great railway, and then, by a few rough sketches, rapidly to pass in review some of the scenes illustrative of the practical working of the line, which we witnessed at the principal stations of the London and North-Western Railway—say Euston, Camden, Wolverton, and Crewe.
LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY.
CHAPTER I.
On the Construction of a Railway.
At the grand inauguration dinner eaten in Paris on the 28th of December, 1848, for the express purpose of celebrating the installation of the new President of the French Republic, it has been recorded by the reporters present, that among the numerous guests assembled, there was no one whose presence engrossed such universal attention as that of an erect emaciated member of “La Vieille Garde.”
The old soldier, it is stated, as he sat at table, scarcely noticed the constellations of bright, black, and hazel-coloured eyes that from all directions were concentrated upon him, but, addressing himself first to his own black bottle, and then with the utmost good humour to those of his neighbours, he drank and ate—drank—swigged—reflected,—and then, as if to refresh himself, drank again, again, and again, until, according to pre-arrangement, he stood up on the tribune to re-propose the health of “Louis Napoleon,” to which—coupling the meteor now shining in its zenith with the “sun of Austerlitz,” which, though sunk for ever below the horizon, still beamed as resplendently as ever within his heart—he added, with great naïveté, “Mais sans oublier l’autre!”