A writer in the _Quarterly Review_, in 1825, was quite prophetical as to the dangers connected with railway travelling. He observes:—“It is certainly some consolation to those who are to be whirled at the rate of 18 or 20 miles an hour by means of a high-pressure engine, to be told that there is no danger of being sea-sick while on shore, that they are not to be scalded to death, nor drowned, nor dashed to pieces by the bursting of a boiler; and that they need not mind being struck by the flying off or breaking of a wheel. What can be more palpably absurd or ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling _twice as fast_ as stage coaches! We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve’s Ricochet Rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine going at such a rate. We will back old Father Thames against the Woolwich Railway for any sum. We trust that Parliament will, in all railways it may sanction, limit the speed to _eight or nine miles an hour_, which we entirely agree with Mr. Sylvestor is as great as can be ventured on with safety.” PARLIAMENTARY OPPOSITION. On the third reading of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill in the House of Commons, The Hon. Edward Stanley moved that the bill be read that day six months, assigning, among other reasons, that the railway trains worked by horses would take ten hours to do the distance, and that they could not be worked by locomotive engines. Sir Isaac Coffin seconded the motion, indignantly denouncing the project as fraught with fraud and imposition. He would not consent to see widows’ premises invaded, and “how,” he asked, “would any person like to have a railroad under his parlour window? . . . What, he would like to know, was to be done with all those who had advanced money in making and repairing turnpike-roads? What with those who may still wish to travel in their own or hired carriages, after the fashion of their forefathers? What was to become of coach-makers and harness-makers, coach-masters and coachmen, innkeepers, horse-breeders, and horse-dealers? Was the House aware of the smoke and noise, the hiss and whirl, which locomotive engines, passing at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, would occasion? Neither the cattle ploughing in the fields or grazing in the meadows could behold them without dismay. . . . Iron would be raised in price 100 per cent., or, more probably, exhausted altogether! It would be the greatest nuisance, the most complete disturbance of quiet and comfort in all parts of the kingdom, that the ingenuity of man could invent!” SPEED OF RAILWAY ENGINES.