made in the reign of James I., to the lord of the manor, Mr. Palmer, the inember for the county. From the wellknown benevolence of that gentleman there can be but one conviction as to the mode in which the money will be applied."

At the inquest, Mr. Brunel was one of the witnesses examined. Being asked why the passengers were put in front next the engine, he explained that "many accidents might arise to passengers if placed in the rear of the luggage trains by being run into, luggage trains being liable to be run into by other trains as being slower and unavoidably less punctual." Also there would, he thought, be a risk that the lamp behind might go out, and then the trucks would perhaps get uncoupled and the passengers would be left behind. By a strange coincidence, thirty-three years afterward, another Christmas Eve saw the greatest catastrophe that ever overtook the Great Western Railway. At Shipton thirty-four passengers were killed and more than seventy injured. Again it was a third-class carriage that was wrecked and again the third-class carriage was improperly (so the critics said) next to the engine. After the Sonning accident an empty truck or two was inserted between the engine and the passenger carriage, in order to furnish something soft to run into. In consequence of this same accident the conveyance of passengers by goods train became the subject of a Board of Trade inquiry. It appeared that the Great Western and the South Western were the only companies that habitually attached passenger carriages to heavy luggage trains; on the Birmingham line (which even at this time ranked as the leading company) third-class passengers are taken along with horses, cattle and empty return wagons, but not with heavy luggage wagons.'

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Indeed, the luckless third-class passengers must have had a very bad time of it in the forties. The fares were not over-cheap; being usually nearly and in several instances quite three-halfpence per mile, or the same as first-class fares are at present on the great northern lines. For this sum the third-class traveller was conveyed at unearthly hours in company with "horses, cattle

and empty wagons," in pens that horses and cattle would have disdained to occupy. The carriages, as they were called, had no roofs, and of course no windows; being open at the side to within a foot or two of the floor. On one occasion the passengers profited by the openness of their carriage to warm their hands on the chimney of the engine, which was being driven tender foremost. At the urgent representation of the Board of Trade officials, the panelling at the side was increased in height, as many people had fallen out while the trains were in motion, and buffer springs were added; other springs were only occasionally present. At a later period one company was generous enough to provide doors 4 feet high. Third-class trains from London to Taunton took sixteen hours over the 163 miles, leaving London either at 9 P.M. or 4 A. M. When a shareholder pleaded for greater speed, he was met by the answer that passengers in third-class carriages would not be able to endure the exposure to the weather if they travelled more rapidly. To Liverpool and Manchester there was one third-class train only in the twenty-four hours, and passengers had to wait at Birmingham from 3 P.M. till 6 o'clock next morning. No wonder the Board of Trade remarks that "the advantage to the third-class passengers in point of time is often not so great as might be anticipated.” wonder also that "on the long lines, which form the main lines of communication with the Metropolis, the number of third-class passengers was inconsiderable." The Great Western carried 12,000 in six months, the London and Birmingham 24,000.

No

It is only fair, however, to remember that even to the Board of Trade it was "questionable whether the interest of the proprietors of these lines will ever lead them to encourage the development of a third-class traffic." Everything that was done was done as a concession and a favor, "for the advantage of the poorer classes, never as a matter of business in search of a profit. It should be said also that, on local lines in manufacturing districts, e.g. between Sheffield and Rotherham, Leeds and Manchester, or Shields and Newcastle, a quite different state of things pre

were

vailed. Third-class passengers not only conveyed in covered carriages, but actually in one instance, at least, were furnished with seats. The consequence was that the Newcastle and North Shields line conveyed in the first six months of 1841 seven times as many third-class passengers as the London and Birmingham and the Grand Junction, put together, carried over their whole systems. Another consequence followed, that "certain persons in superior positions' were base enough to travel in thirdclass carriages. If universal indignation could have crushed these miserable creatures, they would soon have succumbed; but apparently they persevered. Thereupon the management of the Manchester and Leeds Railway adopted what was known as the "sootbag system." Sweeps were hired to enter a third-class carriage which had been specially kept for the benefit of "persons in a superior position," and then shake out the contents of their bags. At other times, if a correspondent of the Railway Times can be trusted, "sheep and sometimes pigs were made the substitutes for sweeps. Even then some persons (if report said true, some bailies of the City of Glasgow) persevered in their evil courses. But their conduct evidently was strongly reprehended by all respectable persons. A survival of these ancient ideas may still be traced in the superstition which prevents Jeames de la Pluche from demeaning himself by travelling third class. Not that the second-class carriages were so markedly superior after all. A correspondent of the Times, who claims to have travelled on most of the railways in England, writes "on most lines there is a boarded partition from the top to the bottom of the carriage between each set of passengers, and the sides are partially enclosed to keep out the wind; but not so on the South Western, they seem studiously to have rendered them as bad as could be devised." Even the first-class carriages were very small and cramped. A modern first-class on six wheels, with seats for twenty-four persons in four compartments, weighs four times as much as one of the original firsts with three compartments on four wheels, and allows fully three times the cubic space

per passenger. Outside England, however, bigger carriages were already built. The Belgians had their queer two-decker arrangement that English tourists nowadays contemplate with amused astonishment; on the line between Leipsic and Berlin bogie carriages were already in use; while in America, from the very beginning, the long open cars had been universally adopted.

But English engineers were haunted with the notion that engines could not draw larger and heavier carriages, and it was only as the small, light, fourwheeled engines gave place to the larger and heavier engines on six wheels, that roomier carriages came into use. But, though the engineers hesitated to increase the size of the carriages, they had no such scruple as to the length of the trains. Here are one or two extracts from newspapers under date '42 and '43. "A few evenings ago a luggage train consisting of eighty wagons left Hull for Selby, its length was nearly half a mile." On Thursday the 6 A.M.

from Paddington to Taunton carried the immense and unprecedented number of 2115 passengers." Sometimes when interior accommodation fell short, "the train moved off with the people clustering like bees on the roofs and platforms of the carriages." "In going back" from seeing the Queen in Edinburgh, in September, 1842, one train took over 1500 people at once. Between carriages, wagons, etc., the train consisted of 110 vehicles filled with passengers, propelled by five engines, four in front and one behind, and the whole extended to the enormous length of nearly a third of a mile." The Scottish Guardian, which chronicles this event, adds, "We doubt very much whether a similar feat has ever been performed on any railway in the kingdom, and yet it is nothing to what might be achieved on an emergency by the London and Birmingham Railway Company, which has between 90 and 100 engines and a proportionate number of carriages." Why the London and Birmingham or any other Company should be desirous of despatching all their engines and carriages together at one fell swoop, may not seem obvious to a reader of to-day. Probably the chief reason was, that in the absence of signals it was not safe for

one train to follow another closely. Not indeed that it is absolutely correct to say that signals were non-existent, for as early as 1841 one semaphore at least was in use at New Cross. But it was not till five years afterward that trains were protected by distance signals.

Passengers who endeavored to solace themselves on their journey with tobacco met with scant sympathy. A foreign gentleman, writes a correspondent of the Mechanic's Magazine, in September, 1842, was smoking a cigar in a train coming from Brighton to London. "The guard warned him that the practice was not allowed. Nevertheless the gentleman continued to smoke, and finished his cigar. At the next station he was met by a demand for his ticket, ordered out of the coupé, and the guard, addressing one of the officers on the platform, warned him that that person was not to be allowed to proceed to London by any train that night,' and there the gentleman was left.' The passenger (so says the Railway Times, which repeats the story)" suffered most properly for persisting in violating the laws of the Company. Even this can hardly match an occurrence that happened some years later on the Edinburgh and Glasgow line. A gentleman, well known at the time in the West of Scotland, was in a train going to Edinburgh. He smelled tobacco and, calling the guard, complained that some one was smoking in the train. The guard failed, or said he failed, to find the offender, and the offensive smell continued to annoy the old gentleman. He therefore brought an action against the Company for the inconvenience to which he had been subjected, and recovered £8 6s 8d. (£100 Scots) as damages in the Court of Session. But even at this time one English company was com plaisant enough to run a first-class smokng carriage, under the name of "the divan," though a second refused to put on a third-class for the use of smokers who offered to pay first-class fare.

Since 1842 many a line has made a reputation and lost it again. In those days the South Eastern was described as a "go-ahead Company," and congratulated on its arrangements made with consummate judgment, with due regard for the comfort of the passen

gers. "The carriages on the Dover line do great credit to the judgment and taste of the directors, says one writer.

On the other hand, the Taff Vale, which has probably returned its ordinary shareholders dividends far larger than any other company in England, is contemptuously alluded to as that unfortunate concern." Even in 1842, however, the London and Birmingham was recognized as the "mirror of railways," and, except in the treatment of third-class passengers, it seems well to have deserved its name. Newspaper editors and correspondents, Board of Trade Inspectors, and the investing public all rose up in turn and blessed it, its directors, and its officials. Their speed, their punctuality, their care for the interest of their employés at their Wolverton works, the magnificence and comfort of their station at Euston, all in turn were applauded. Two innovations were made under their auspices during this period:-the introduction of railway tickets printed in consecutive numbers on cardboard, as we have them to-day; and the admission of cabs licensed to ply for hire within the precincts of their stations. The £100 shares at this time stood as high as £223, and the dividend was at the rate of 10 per cent.

Such was the position of railways in 1842 and 1843. In one respect, the latter year marks an innovation almost as great as railways themselves. The electric telegraph was opened between London and Slough. But railways proper were well-nigh stationary. The companies were being urged on all hands to close their capital accounts." The London and Birmingham was exhorted to be content with its "enormous traffic." The only new lines that could be expected to pay (with the exception of the Channel Tunnel, which was strongly recommended by one enthusiastic correspondent) were agricultural lines made at a cost not exceeding £10,ooo a mile. And yet the country was on the eve of the gigantic outburst of speculation that culminated in the great crash of 1846. George Hudson, the

ONE of the brightest visions created by the imagination of poets and prophets is that of a golden age, past or future; an age when there has been or shall be no war and no cruelty; an age of wisdom, reason, and gentleness among all mankind. But if we search the depths of written and traditional history, or those older and truer histories, the records of the rocks, there is abundant evidence that no such golden age has existed for man or beast; and if we read the signs of the times without prejudice, it is impossible to doubt, not only that a future golden age is utterly beyond our ken, but even that at this moment the civilized world is passing through one of the retrograde movements which occur from time to time, and are the backwash of the muchvaunted "wave of civilization." It may be admitted that, on the whole, there is progress, but it would be a fatal error to take the desires and interests of a commonwealth like our own, chiefly commercial and with more territory than it knows how to manage, for the general feeling of civilized mankind. And if civilized nations are not yet weaned from the contemplation of war as a necessity and a glory; if such people as the brilliant French, and educated, deep-thinking Germans, are at this moment sharpening and brandishing their swords against each other, how are we to expect that semi-civilized States like Russia, or the barbarous tribes which still occupy so large a portion of this fair world, are to leap at one bound up all the steps of progress in the "enthusiasm of humanity"-steps over which the leaders of civilization have so painfully toiled during the lapse of centuries, and down. which some of them are now apparently descending?

Yet, in the midst of the anxieties caused by our panic-breeding unreadiness for war, there are still some individuals so curiously insular in habit of thought as to spend their valuable time and energies in attempting to propagate the idea that we have no need of an army; and others who ask plaintively to

be told for what purpose England requires a military force, seeing that she is surrounded by sea, and therefore, they presume, safe from invasion. At least, these seekers after truth show us a shining example of one great principle of the military art-namely, that the best way to defend one's own ground is to carry the war into that of the enemy. Their question is not unlike the posers set to their elders by children who, during some homily on conduct, will ask : "Why is anybody born naughty?'' or as if a student, during the demonstration of a difficult problem in astronomy, should refuse to proceed further until his tutor had made clear to him what is the nature and cause of the force of gravity; for, to such original depths must the bucket be sent down by him who attempts to bring to the surface the truth about armies and their necessity. How far shall the argument go back? and how much may be taken for granted? Obviously the task becomes too much for mortal strength if we may not take for granted original sin, or the struggle for existence, or whatever may be the favorite explanation of the fact, that from all time men, like other animals, have fought for love, for hunger

including earth-hunger in man's case and generally to get by means of force whatever their hearts were set upon, even if it were the conversion of their brother from the error of his religious or political ways. It would be tedious to give the proofs of this fact with which all history teems, and the answer would probably be: We don't need any information about the exterminating wars of savages, or the raids of robber barons, or devastations of religious persecutors, or the scientific campaigns of ambitious princes; the question is, Why, in this era of civilization, intellectual, and commercial progress, and general mildness of manners, it should be necessary to have standing armies, especially in this commercial country of ours?"

Now, on this point turn a great many curious fallacies and misapprehensions of facts. Without denying that we are

all gradually becoming gentler and more civilized, it must be confessed that the stage to which we have reached is still inconveniently crowded with police, judges, lawyers, convicts, and even here and there an executioner with his gibbet. And there would probably have to be many more, if it were not known that behind all stands the army, ready in the last resort to support law and order. The quiet scholar who labors at his desk for the advancement of learning, the comfortable tradesman who piles up his guineas in full assurance that his family and fortune will be protected; and, generally, the whole decent peace loving folk owe to the existence of an army their freedom from daily peril, and, in this country at least, their immunity from forcible calls to pay with their persons the blood-tax which they grudge to give from their purses. If a proposal were made to abolish the police of this civilized city of London, what a fine outcry there would be at the madness of letting the dangerous classes have their way. Why, then, should they suppose that there are no international dangerous classes ready to take advantage of the absence of those international police called armies? National security, wealth, and freedom to move forward in the path which suits any nation rest entirely on the power possessed by that nation to defend itself against the aggression of the dangerous classes of the world. The day has not arrived, if it ever will, when there are no poor and warlike nations ready to say: "I will come with my iron and take all that gold"-gold of wealth, gold of freedom, civilization, and progress. And

if we question ourselves honestly as a people, we cannot but admit that slackness of trade, with its threat of poverty, invariably produces outcries for opening up new markets even at the point of the sword. Of all causes for the decline of the military spirit the most powerful has probably been free trade; yet the instinctive desire for freeing our trade was the main cause of our wars in the eighteenth century; and what else but the determination to make and keep trade free has led us lately into Burmah? We go with our iron. and force the presence of our traders on unwilling but

weak nations, yet believe that we may be weak and safe.

In time past, before the invention of gunpowder, nothing was easier than to form an army for offence or defence. Nearly every man possessed a weapon, and knew how to use it. There were no standing armies nor any need for them, since the time of Roman discipline; but princes raised levies without difficulty, and the whole gentle-born population consisted either of military leaders or of clergy; both avocations being sometimes exercised by the same individual. But with gunpowder came increased expense, both in the explosive itself and the weapons introduced for its service. The classes from which the private soldiers were drawn could not afford to buy and keep such costly firearms, and, moreover, an amount of discipline and practice not required before became necessary. Hence trained armies began to take the place of the rude militia which formerly sufficed for war purposes. The troops had to be paid, and thus gradually arose the system of armies separated from the rest of the population. The new organization for war had its good and bad side. It was good that the bulk of the people should be free to pursue the arts of peace, but armies became mercenary and addicted to plunder and high-handed measures of various kinds. A separation in habits and interests occurred between them and the people, and a feeling of antagonism was developed, which is at the root of most of the prejudices cherished to this day by the British people against the soldiers by whom they are guarded. In other countries the reintroduction of compulsory general service has once more identified the army with the people, and, while weighing to a considerable extent on the productive powers of nations, has yet served in some instances the cause of education, and helped to weld together the different provinces of the same country. Respect for order and authority has been created and fostered, and soldiers going back to their homes, after a comparatively short period in the ranks, have carried with them the germs of virtues which they and their families might never have known but for the education