"But, mercy on us!" we hear Mr Francis or some of his backers exclaim--"is it nothing that commercial gentlemen can now make four trips a-day between Manchester and Liverpool, and do a stroke of business on each occasion?" We reply, that it would be better for the said commercial gentlemen, both here and hereafter, if they would content themselves with a more moderate pursuit of Mammon. Happiness in this life does not depend upon the amount of sales effected. The assistant in the London grocer's shop, who daily ties up a thousand packages of tea and sugar, is not greatly to be envied beyond his brother in the country, who twists the twine around fifty. We have an intense respect for work while kept within wholesome limits; but we cannot regard the man whose sole pursuit is grubbing after gold as otherwise than an ignominious slave. The railways are in one sense excellent things. You can get from point to point, if necessity requires it, much sooner than before, at less cost, and perhaps with less inconvenience. But there the advantage ends. There is no pleasure in them; and, compared with former methods of locomotion, they are decidedly less healthy and less instructive. We decry them not. We only wish to stop the babbling of the blockheads who would have us to believe that, until the steam-engine was invented, this earth was an unendurable waste, a wilderness of barbarians, and an unfit residence for civilised and enlightened man. Would the genius either of Shakspeare or Newton have been greater had they known of the rails? Would the splendour of the reign of Elizabeth have been heightened had Stephenson then existed?