“Nor is the rapid passage across Chat Moss unworthy of notice. The ingenuity with which two narrow rods of iron are made to bear whole trains of wagons, laden with many hundred tons of commerce, and bounding across a wide, semi-fluid morass, previously impassable by man or beast, is beyond all praise and deserving of eternal record. Only conceive a slender bridge of two minute iron rails, several miles in length, level as Waterloo, elastic as whalebone, yet firm as adamant! Along this splendid triumph of human genius—this veritable _via triumphalis_—the train of carriages bounds with the velocity of the stricken deer; the vibrations of the resilient moss causing the ponderous engine and its enormous suite to glide along the surface of an extensive quagmire as safely as a practiced skater skims the icy mirror of a frozen lake. “The first class or train is the most fashionable, but the second or third are the most amusing. I travelled one day from Liverpool to Manchester in the lumber train. Many of the carriages were occupied by the swinish multitude, and others by a multitude of swine. These last were naturally vociferous if not eloquent. It is evident that the other passengers would have been considerably annoyed by the orators of this last group, had there not been stationed in each carriage an officer somewhat analogous to the Usher of the Black Rod, but whose designation on the railroad I found to be ‘Comptroller of the Gammon.’ No sooner did one of the long-faced gentlemen raise his note too high, or wag his jaw too long, than the ‘Comptroller of the Gammon’ gave him a whack over the snout with the butt end of his shillelagh; a snubber which never failed to stop his oratory for the remainder of the journey.” To one familiar with the history of railroad legislation the last paragraph is peculiarly significant. For years after the railroad system was inaugurated, and until legislation was invoked to compel something better, the companies persisted in carrying passengers of the third class in uncovered carriages, exposed to all weather, and with no more decencies or comforts than were accorded to swine. EARLY RAILWAY TRAVELLING. A writer in _Notes and Queries_ remarks:—“On looking over a diary kept by my father during two journeys northward in 1830–31, I thought the readers might be amused with his account of what he saw of railway travelling, then in its infancy:—