entertained by persons who know nothing either of Spain or Spanish muleteers. By the side of the line he doubtless would often be found; but not as a telegraph to warn of danger. In his new capacity of brigand, his look-out would be for the purses of the passengers. He could hardly stop an express train in the old Finchley style of presenting himself and his pistol at the carriage window, but a few stones and tree-trunks would answer the purpose as well. "A handful of opponents," says Mr. Ford, "in any cistus-grown waste, may at any time, in five minutes, break up the road, stop the train, stick the stoker, and burn the engines in their own fire, particularly smashing the luggage-train." To English ears this may sound like absurd exaggeration. We have difficulty in imagining a gang of stage-coachmen, even though they have been puffed off their boxes by the mighty blast of steam, combining, under the orders of Captain Brown or Jones, the gentleman driver of some Cambridge, Rockingham, or Brighton bang-up, to build barricades across railways and pick off engineers from behind a quickset hedge. Here there would be no impunity for such malefactors; their campaign against innovation would speedily conduct them to Newgate and the hulks. Not so in the Peninsula, where roads are few, police defective, and where, at the present time, smugglers and other notorious law-breakers strut upon the crown of the causeway, appear boldly in towns, and hold themselves in every respect for as honest men as their neighbours. But it is not to be supposed that popular opposition, probable, almost certain, as it is, to be met with in such a half African, semi-civilized country, would be held worth a moment's consideration by the dashing schemers who propose to cover the Peninsula with iron arteries. The audacity of those persons is only to be equalled by their consummate geographical ignorance, several instances of which are shown up with much humour and irony by the author of the "Gatherings." Some of the most notoriously absurd of the schemes set afloat, have had their origin with Englishmen, of whom, since the close of the civil war, and especially within the last year or two, a vast number have betaken themselves to Spain, to follow up ventures more or less hopeful or hopeless. Owing to a long peace, to a rapid growth of population, and to the daily-increasing difficulty of fortune-making, the class ADVENTURER has of late years, both in this country and the sister kingdom, greatly augmented its numbers. This is evident from the throng of unemployed and aspiring gentlemen ever ready to engage in any undertaking, however desperate and doubtful of success. Let a clandestine expedition be contemplated to some hole-and-corner state or antipodean republic, and up start a host of mettlesome cavaliers, from all ranks and classes, including Irish lords and English baronets and squires of low degree, having all fought in three or four services, more