the night with the strength and straightness of a red-hot cannon-ball. And then we called for candles and went to bed. The train was to pass on its way to Bristol at half-past eleven, so we had plenty of time to see the lions of Reading--if there had been any animals of the kind in the neighbourhood--but after a short detour in the street, and a glimpse into the country, we found ourselves irresistibly attracted to the railway. The scene here was the same as on the previous night, and we were more and more confirmed in our opinion, that, next to the sea or a navigable river, a railway is the pleasantest object in a rural view. As to the impostors who extort thousands of pounds from the unhappy shareholders, on the pretext that the line will be injurious to their estates, they ought at once to be sent to Brixton for obtaining money under false pretences. It gives a greatly increased value to their lands, as may be seen by the superior rents they can obtain for the farms along the line; and as to the picturesqueness of the landscape, it is only because the eye is not yet accustomed to it, nor the mind embued with railway associations, that it is not considered a finer "object" than the level greenery of a park, or the hedgerows of a cultivated farm. Painters have already begun to see the grandeur of a tempestuous sea ridden over by steamers; and before the end of the next war, some black "queller of the ocean flood," with short funnel and smoke-blackened sails, will be thought as fit a theme for poetry and romance, as the Victory or the Shannon.