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"Where, then, shall we fix the boundaries of the districts, the railways in which are to have no connexion with those in any other?

"The completed or projected branches of the Great Western Railway itself. which was expected, as we have seen, to have no connexion with any other existing line now join it to most of the other main lines in the country. For in

stance:

"To the Grand Junction, and to the projected Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railways, at Wolverhampton.

"To the Grand Junction, London and Birmingham, and Midland Railways at Birmingham.

"To the London and Birmingham, the Midland, and the proposed Trent Valley and Churnet Valley Lines, at Rugby.

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To the London and Birmingham Railway again at Warwick.

61 6 To the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway, at Cheltenham and Worcester. "To the South Western Railway, at Basingstoke and Salisbury.

"To the projected Dorchester and Southampton Railway, at Dorchester.

"To the proposed Welsh Midland Line, at Hereford and Swansea.

"To the Bristol and Gloucester Line, with which it is already connected, at Bristol and Stonehouse.'

"[All these are narrow gauge lines, with the exception of the last, which is a broad-gauge line at present; but its proprietors have announced their desire and intention of obtaining powers to convert it into a narrow-gauge line.]

"And if the Great Western Railway, with its broad-gauge branches, does not go to these lines, they with their narrow. gauge branches will come to the Great Western. Thus connecting by railway almost every county and town in the kingdom with every other.

What are all these branches projected for, except to bring traffic from the lines and districts with which they communicate, or to take traffic to them from one extremity of the country to another? and, therefore, over the narrow gauge on to the broad gauge, or over the broad gauge on to the narrow gauge?

The

difficulties attending a change of gauge, then, which, as was admitted, would in 1838 have entirely prevented in the north such a course' as one railway adopting different dimensions from the rest, now have existence in the west.'

"

"The same gentleman also deposed before the Gauge Commissioners, that (4510), starting from Oxford, a broad gauge line, a bill for which has been passed, is projected from Oxford to Rugby, and that a branch from this to Birmingham is also projected, passing through Warwick, which has also received the sanction of parliament, and is subject to the decision, as regards the gauge, of the Board of Trade. Another broadgauge line, extending from Oxford by Worcester to Wolverhampton, has also received the sanction of parliament, subject to the same conditions as to gauge between Worcester and Wolverhampton. A broad-gauge line is projected from Oxford to Cheltenham, and so on to Gloucester. A broad-gauge line is projected from near Worcester to near Ludlow. A broad-gauge line is projected from Bristol to Monmouth, Hereford, and Leominster, joining the Worcester and Ludlow line near that place. A broad-gauge line is also projected from Gloucester to Hereford. A broad-gauge line is projected from Standish, proceed. ing by Newport, Cardiff, and Neath, into Pembrokeshire. From Ludlow a broadgauge line is projected, by Newtown, to Port Dynllaen. Another broad-gauge line is projected from Ludlow, by Shrewsbury and Whitchurch, to Chester, near which a branch leaving it proceeds by Tarporley to Manchester on the one hand, and to Liverpool on the other, crossing the Grand Junction near Northwich. In the foregoing statement, all the places named as those through which the lines in question pass, are points of intersection with other projected narrow-gauge lines. This statement refers exclusively to projects north of Bristol and Oxford.”

"If the Great Western Railway does not go to these lines, they with the narrow-gauge branches will go to the Great Western." The magnificent exclusiveness of the broad gauge is broken up for ever. It mustn't and it can't live in isolation; the country won't consent to the existence of a West End in railways. The broad-gauge rails lie on the ground still; but under the lines; and the works, the base of the broadgauge argument, is surely completely destroyed; and the rails on which the Great Mammoth engines triumphantly run-to the admiration of

Note to the 4th Edition. The projected lines on the map, excluding all directly competing lines, give rise to about twenty points of break of gauge, beyond those mentioned above; in all, then, about thirty points of break of gauge, similar to that at Gloucester, will be established in the course of the next five years, if government does not interfere to prevent it."

Mr. Lushington-are running upon false foundations.

There can be no doubt of the fact stated by him in support of his favourite megatheria, that it is to the rivalry with the broad-gauge line that we owe the amelioration of its opponent in respect of speed. We owe that benefit undoubtedly to Mr. Brunel's great engines B.; the smaller ones have been put upon their mettle, and now Mr. Stephenson is ready to back a small engine for 10,000l. against one from the big-gauge factories. Can any one suppose that the impulse once given, the people in England will allow the narrow-gauge engines to crawl, when they have driven their opponents off the road? It is not so,-no, not in a contest of busses. Give the great public the advantage once, and it is an outrage to their common sense to suppose they will forego it. What is the noise and battle made about now? -About the loss of time occasioned by this very break of gauge.

Because, then, people say, the narrow gauge completely established over the country will do our work, convey ourselves, our goods, our cattle, our coals, better than the broad gauge, who has a right to say that the narrow gauge is "deliberately re-establishing a lower standard of railroad benefits?" A gig is a lower standard than a chaise-and-four, but if the gig accommodates you equally well-if you can afford to keep three gigs in various parts of the country at the cost, and to do three times the service, of the larger vehicle, who is to say, "Let us have chaises-and-four everywhere?" Only the most prodigal, generous, and imaginative economists, surely. And the question is not whether you can make the grandest dash and figure with the big carriage on race-day, but which is the useful vehicle for all the days of the year?

And upon this head comes forward a pamphleteer with the fatal signature of £. s. d., whose arguments are addressed, in the most pathetic manner, to the broad-gauge proprietors themselves; and who says that Mr. Brunel "has learned to shave on their chins." "Remark, gentlemen," says this shrewd £. s. d., "that in no instance has a company for forming a broad-gauge line formed itself except under the shadow of the Great West

ern Company, promoted by its director, designed by its engineer, and supported by its money." The whole country declares against the magnificent gauge. And what is the cause? £. s. d. is the cause,

"On every mile of the 176 worked by the London and Birmingham (narrow gauge) Railway, there remains applicable to a dividend, after paying all charges upon the revenue, per half-year, the sum of 20951.

"On every mile of the 140 miles worked by the Grand Junction (narrow gauge), there remains applicable to a dividend, after paying all charges on the revenue, the sum of 21601.

"On every mile of the 240 miles worked by the Great Western (broad gauge) Railway, the grand trunk line westwards, there remains applicable to a dividend, after paying all charges on the revenue, the sum of 7681."

Such are the returns of profits on the broad and the narrow gauge lines, which £. s. d. submits to the consideration of the shareholding world-and of the Great Western shareholders in particular. Are they willing, he asks, to receive six per cent, at the best, for their capital, when laid out on the narrow-gauge lines it may be made to return fourteen? Are they willing, in order to perfect their scheme in the West, where they must form lines over districts less favourable to commerce than those which they work at present, to take upon themselves the responsibility of twenty millions more? Is their system so good that they can hold it against the stronger, the cheaper, the more profitablethe national system, in a word-of the narrow gauge ?

They can't even, as Mr. Harding argues, give fair scope and advantage to the people in their own country. In connexion with the enormous trunk line the branches must be enormous. If it be difficult to make the great stations pay now, how much more will it be to establish small ones, which henceforth ought to be a condition of all railroads? The small tradesman, the poor village, the small farmer can't afford an outlet for their goods which is to be purchased at such a tremendous expense of road-making. These have as good a right to communicate with the main railroad stream now-a-days,

as it to be fed by their contribution. It is no longer a convenience, as we have said; a luxury, like the Quicksilver coach, to be adopted by those who could afford it, while the Old Blue was travelling for the vulgar at six miles an hour-but a right to which every member of the English industrial republic ought to lay claim.

And grant that the big engine is swifter at an express and the big first carriage more comfortable than the small (though even this is a question, as many gentlemen who have run away with interesting young ladies in a narrow-gauge coupé, with two seats, declare the conveyance the most agreeable in the world) :-but grant that the big engine is the swifter and this is all you get. That swiftness has so enchanted the most brilliant of the broad-gauge advocates that he calls it, in a noble image, "equivalent to the creation of time," and so holds up the broad gauge as the sign of human advancement, and the narrow, by consequence, as the type of the degradation of mankind-a deliberate re-establishment of a lower standard for every benefit which railroads confer on mankind. Why so? You have not given this system fair play. As a partial system, if its benefits have been prodigious, they become incredibly multiplied when it is a national scheme. It is "twice blessed" for the shareholder and the traveller.

It is a

spring of wealth as yet undeveloped for the one; for make the narrow, or any gauge scheme, a national one, and there is no knowing, no calculating how vast its results may be. Look at its progress since it was born fifteen years ago. The petitions of the university bigwigs against it, and the declarations of the engineers who published the "able document" condemning it, are scarcely more absurd than Mr. Brunel's declaration, that the Great Western Line "would not interfere" with the other lines in England. The West must and ought to interfere with the North, and Irish pigs to travel over the length and breadth of the country as well as Durham coal, or Suffolk oxen, or Welsh iron, or Cornish tin. Let us grant (though Mr. Stephenson is

there with 10,000l. to say no) that the broad-gauge racer can beat the narrow-gauge engine. What then? The narrow-guage express can still travel fifty miles an hour-the narrow-gauge trains go to this day as quick as the broad-and is the nation such a fool as to deprive itself of the benefits which it has got?

Make it a national scheme, and you have the whole country in hand. Never mind about the expresses. Take the gauge which already occupies seven-eighths of the railroad country; not because it is three times as cheap and profitable as its opponent; not because the Great Western shareholders themselves would profit immeasurably by annexation to the railroad republic, but because the narrow-gauge does occupy seven-eighths of the country. One thing is clear, the small unpaying line can never swallow the great productive one: the broad-gauge line may become narrow gauge without hindrance to the commerce of the country, the narrow gauge can never become broad.

But a period is, perhaps, at hand when large and small engines shall disappear altogether; when Mr. Stephenson's new galloper, backed at 10,000l. against twice his weight; when the Mammoth engines, big and beautiful as they are, splendidly rushing down their broad streams of iron, shall give place to something still more rapid and powerful-the Atmospheric Principle, which Mr. Brunel believes in. Then let them be rolled to the National Museum, and take their places beside Henry VIII's gun, or the figure of the dethroned Jupiter, or the statute of the repealed Corn-laws.

Meanwhile there never was a clearer moral, as we take it to be, got out of any series of volumes, and pamphlets, and inquiries, than that the railroad system of the country ought to be one; and we dutifully concur in the opinion submitted to her majesty by her dutiful Commissioners:

"That the gauge of four feet eight inches and a half be declared by the legis. lature to be the gauge to be used in all public railways now under construction, or hereafter to be constructed, in Great Britain."

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Anecdote about an Old House, 434
Annette, 503

Apprentices of Milliners, 308
Army, Education in the, 719

Arnold's Lectures on Modern History,
596

Austerlitz, the Campaign of. Chap. I.
649; Chap. II. 657
Authorship, Female, 460

B.G. and the N.G. A few words on the
Gauge Dispute, 743

Balzac, H. De. The Pride of a Spoiled
Beauty, Chap. I. 46; Chap. II. and
Conclusion, 180

Beauty, the Pride of a Spoiled. Adapted
from the French of H. De Balzac,
Chap. I. 46; Chap. II. and Con-
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Beggars, 666

Bekentnisse von Uhlich, review of, 694
Bell, Chamber of the, Chap. 1. 530;
Chap. II. 535; Chap. III. 541
Bible in Spain, by George Borrow, 379
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Borrow, George, The Bible in Spain, 379
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Brother of the Press on the History of a
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In a Letter to the Rev. Francis Sylves-
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Cabinet, Mysteries of the, 121
Cabinet and Sir Robert Peel, What is
the Position of? 369

Caged Lark, the, 740

Campaign, the Late, and the Sikhs, 606
Campaign of Austerlitz, Chap. I. 649;
Chap. II. 657
Campaign of Marengo, 545
Ceylon, Elephant Shooting in, 561
Chamber of the Bell, Chap. I. 530;
Chap. II. 535; Chap. III. 541
Chapter on Straws, being the first Spe-
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Character and Theories of Mr. Newman,
253

Childrens' Books reviewed by Michael
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Chimes for the New Year, 1

Colony, Life in a; or, the Old Judge.

The Lone House. By the Author of
Sam Slick the Clockmaker, The Attaché,
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Common Lodging-house, 342

Condition, Past and Present, of British
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Contemporary Orators, No. VI. The
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Lord Morpeth, 474; No. X. Mr.
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Counsel Mal-à-Propos, 288
Crime, Philosophy of, with Illustrations
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Stirn, 235

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Earl Grey. Contemporary Orators, No.
IX. 466

Education in the Army, 719
Egypt, A Dinner in Ancient, 229
Elephant Shooting in Ceylon, 561
Elm-Wood, The Lady of, Chap. I. 113;
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Ernest Walkinworm's Opinion of Seville.
In a Letter to Mr. Grubley, 683
Essay on the Developement of Christian
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False Alarm. A True Story, 232
Familiar History, Illustrations from. The
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Felix Summerly's Home Treasury, re-
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Female Authorship, 460
Fight with the Dragon.
man of Schiller, 591
First Flower - Painter.
Sycion, 72

From the Ger-

A Legend of

Francis David Stirn, 235
French Trial, On a late, 621
French Newspapers and Newspaper
Writers, French Farceurs and Feuil-
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Gammer Gurton's Story-Books, revised by
Ambrose Merton, Geut., review of, 495
Gelnhausen, the Legend of. From the

History of the Twelfth Century, 143

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Lady of Elm-Wood, Chap. I. 113, Chap.
II. 116

Late Campaign of the Sikhs, 606
Late French Trial, 621

Latin Pamphleteers. Sallust, 194
Lectures by Arnold on Modern History,
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Legend of Gelnhausen. From the His-
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Legend of Sycion. The First Flower-
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Le Jeu de Noël. From the Notes of an

Old Traveller, 269
Letter from Rippoldsan, 211
Letters, Public Patronage of Men of, 58
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Life in a Colony; or, the Old Judge.

The Lone House. By the Author of
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Lodging-House, the Common, 342
Lord Morpeth. Contemporary Orators.

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Love, Present and Past, 226
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Manners, Traditions, and Superstitions
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292

Men of Letters, Public Patronage of, 58
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Milly L A Tale of Fact in Hum.
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Ministers, the Position of, 246
Mission der Deutsch-Katholiken, von G.

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Mr. Newman, his Theories and Charac-
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Modern History, Arnold's Lectures on,
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Modern Painters, &c. 358

Morgan Rattler on Railways, 97
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Murillo; or, the Painter without Am-
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No. IV. The Italian Campaigns.
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No. V. The Campaign of Marengo.
Chap. VIII. 545. No. VI. The
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Newcastle, Margaret Lucas, duchess of,
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Newman, Mr.; his Theories and Cha-
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New Settlement of Vale Cartier, and the
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New Year's Chimes, 1

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