Every mile presented a new feature; the green fields, the earth teeming with fertility, the velvet lawns, the verdant fields, the luxuriant woods, the peaceful valleys, the shady lanes, the blossomed orchards, the "balmy odours" of nature--her breath upon the breeze--all combined to raise your dull spirits to a state of ecstasy. Then the excitement as the well-appointed "drag" drove through the village, the guard sounding his cheerful horn, and the coach pulled up for a snack at a cleanly wayside public-house, where the buxom landlady and the pretty barmaid dispensed the creature comforts to the hungry guests, their appetites sharpened by a drive of some twenty or five-and-twenty miles. They then turn to the rail, declaring that, instead of the "balmy odours" of nature--her breath upon the breeze--the traveller is nearly suffocated with the rank smell of oil, smoke, gas, and sulphur. Instead of gazing upon the beauties of England's rural scenery, you are whirled along at the rate of fifty miles an hour, amidst the densest smoke, the groanings of engines, through an embankment of chalk or clay. Just as you are contemplating a fine mountainous view, a stately viaduct, a picturesque waterfall, or a placid lake, another train meets yours, and entirely hides the prospect from you. Instead of the warm welcome at the inn, apostrophised by Shenstone, or the less ostentatious, although not less sincere, reception at the wayside public-house, you are shown into a huge room that reminds you of the spot where the lions are wont to be fed at the Zoological Gardens, where all is noise, hurry, and confusion; where your pockets are emptied and your inner man not filled, from the caloric qualities of the food and the haste in which you are called upon to devour it; and last, not least, they compare the comfort of a barouche and four, a chariot and pair, starting at your own hour, stopping where you like, with the levelling system of the rail, where high-born dames of great degree are mixed with blacklegs and sharpers, where the "hereditary pillars of the State" congregate with Whitechapel "gents" and Corinthian "swells," where prim old maids are "cheek by jowl" with libertine _roués_, where young and innocent boarding-school misses sit next to _soidisant_ captains and needy fortune-hunters, where unprincipled debtors are placed opposite their clamorous creditors, where sage philosophers come in collision with unchained lunatics, and proud peeresses are brought in contact with the frail and fair ones of the demimonde.