Knowledge, which we are every where told is now advancing at railway speed, is still confined within very narrow limits, we are sorry to say, among railway clerks and other officials. They still seem to measure the sphere of their studies by distance, and not by time; for instance, not one of the _employes_ at Reading could give us more information about Bristol than if it had been three days' journey removed from him. Three hours conveys us from one to the other--and yet they did not know the name or situation of a single inn, nor where the boats to Chepstow sailed from, nor whether there were any boats to Chepstow at all. In ancient times such ignorance might be excusable, when the towns were really as distant as London and York now are; but when three hours is the utmost limit, and every half hour the communication is kept up between them, it struck us as something unaccountable that Bristol should be such a complete _terra incognita_ to at least a dozen smart-looking individuals, who stamp off the tickets, and chuck the money into a drawer, with an easy negligence very gratifying to the beholder. Remembering the recommendation of the Royal Western Hotel given us by a friend, with the whispered information that the turtle was inimitable, and only three-and-sixpence a basin; we stowed away the greater portion of the party in a first-class carriage, and betook ourselves in economical seclusion to a vehicle of the second rank. And a first-rate vehicle it was--better in the absence of stuffing on that warm day, than its more aristocratic companion; and in less than three minutes we were all spinning down the road--a line of human and other baggage, at least a quarter of a mile in length.