There is sense as well as absurdity in this list. "Smoking saloons" are noted as a novelty on the Eastern Counties Railway during the year 1846, but in the same year to _Punch_ belongs the credit of suggesting refreshment cars, and indulging in a pictorial forecast of underground railways. [Footnote 5: _Punch_ was especially wroth with the "3 minutes for scalding soup" at Wolverton and Swindon.] [Illustration: A PROPHETIC VIEW OF THE SUBTERRANEAN RAILWAYS] The proposal that drums and trombones should be mounted on the engine as a means of signalling cannot be taken seriously. Railway libraries on the L. & N.W.R. are noted as a novelty in 1849. But by that year the temper of the speculating public had changed, and _Punch_ is a faithful index of the cold fit which had followed the disillusionment of the over-sanguine investor. The lure of El Dorado now beckoned from the New World, and the railway madness gave way to the mining insanity. The papers were full of complaints from discontented shareholders. The Battle of the Gauges continued, but Hudson is already spoken of in _Punch_ as a discrowned sovereign, threatened with disestablishment at Madame Tussaud's. For a while _Punch_ was inclined to extend to him a certain amount of sympathy in his downfall, and in "Two Pictures" he draws a contrast between mammon worship and the onslaught on mammon's high priest by his greedy and discontented worshippers. But the mood of compassion soon changes to resentment in the bitter adaptation of Cowper's poem, _The Loss of the Royal George_:-- Toll for a knave! A knave whose day is o'er! All sunk--with those who gave Their cash, till they'd no more! * * * * * The _Royal George_ is gone, His iron rule is o'er-- And he and his directors Shall break the lines no more! [Sidenote: _King Hudson's Downfall_] In the same vein are the proposals that Hudson should be the chief "Guy" on November 5, and be appointed governor of a convict settlement on the Isle of Dogs. Simultaneously improvements are noted in the quickening of the transit to Paris, the increase of excursions, and the beginning of _voyages de luxe_. But the note of complaint and dissatisfaction prevails. The discomfort, danger, unpunctuality and discourtesy endured by railway passengers are rubbed in with wearisome reiteration. In 1852 _Punch_ ironically comments on the patience of the British public, "content to travel in railway pens, like sheep to the slaughter, injured, deluded, derided, only bleating in return," and concludes his summary of recent protests from correspondents of _The Times_ with the remark:--