The annual returns of our railways furnish some of the most astounding figures of modern statistics. On the 1st of January 1854 there were open in England 5811 miles of railway; in Scotland, 995 miles; in Ireland, 834 miles. In 1853 there were one hundred and two million passengers conveyed, who travelled one billion five hundred million miles, being an average of nearly fifteen miles to each passenger. In England considerably less than one-half of the passengers were by penny-a-mile and other third-class trains; in Ireland one-half; and in Scotland two-thirds. The receipts from goods traffic exceed those of the passenger traffic in England and Scotland, but are less in Ireland. These are indeed wonderful results from a system which was wholly experimental twenty-five years ago. [Illustration: Railway Locomotive.] When William Hutton, in the middle of last century, started from Nottingham (where he earned a scanty living as a bookbinder) and walked to London and back for the purpose of buying tools, he was nine days from home, six of which were spent in going and returning. He travelled on foot, dreading robbers, and still more dreading the cost of food and lodging at public-houses. His whole expenses during this toilsome expedition were only ten shillings and eight pence; but he contented himself with the barest necessaries, keeping the money for his tools sewed up in his shirt-collar. If William Hutton had lived in these days, he would, upon sheer principles of economy, have gone to London by the Nottingham train at a cost of twenty shillings for his transit, in one forenoon, and returned in another. The twenty shillings would have been sacrificed for his conveyance, but he would have had a week's labour free to go to work with his new tools; he need not have sewed his money in his shirt-collar for fear of thieves; and his shoes would not have been worn out and his feet blistered in his toilsome march of two hundred and fifty miles.