The Argentine Railway had special importance and interest, in opening up a vast and most fruitful and salubrious region to European emigration. Those territories offer room and food for myriads. "The population of Russia, that hard-featured country, is about 75,000,000, the population of the Argentine Republic, to which nature has been so bountiful, and in which she is so beautiful, is about 1,000,000." If ever government in the South American States becomes more settled, we shall find them formidable rivals. The Indian Railways are also likely to be a landmark in the history of civilization. They unite that vast country and its people, both materially and morally, break down caste, bring the natives from all parts to the centres of instruction, and distribute the produce of the soil evenly and rapidly, so as to mitigate famines. The Orissa famine would never have occurred, had Mr. Brassey's works been there. What effect the railways will ultimately have on British rule is another question. They multiply the army by increasing the rapidity of transport, but, on the other hand, they are likely to diminish that division among the native powers on which the Empire is partly based. Rebellion may run along the railway line as well as command. There were periods in Mr. Brassey's career during which he and his partners were giving employment to 80,000 persons, upon works requiring seventeen millions of capital for their completion. It is also satisfactory to know, that in the foreign countries and colonies over which his operations extended, he was instrumental in raising the wages and condition of the working class, as well as in affording to the _elite_ of that class opportunities for rising to higher positions. His remuneration for all this, though in the aggregate very large, was by no means excessive. Upon seventy-eight millions of money laid out in the enterprises which he conducted, he retained two millions and a half, that is as nearly as possible three per cent. The rest of his fortune consisted of accumulations. Three per cent. was not more than a fair payment for the brain-work, the anxiety and the risk. The risk, it must be recollected, was constant, and there were moments at which, if Mr. Brassey had died, he would have been found comparatively poor. His fortune was made, not by immoderate gains upon any one transaction, but by reasonable profits in a business which was of vast extent, and owed its vast extent to a reputation, fairly earned by probity, energy and skill. We do not learn that he figured in any lobby, or formed a member of any ring. Whether he was a Norman or not, he was too much a gentleman, in the best sense of the term, to crawl to opulence by low and petty ways. He left no stain on the escutcheon of a captain of industry.