“Ah! but the working of railways! There, at all events, we have you.” “See how defective it is. See the innumerable complaints constantly appearing in the papers about want of punctuality. See the frightful accidents that are occurring.” “Yes; it is quite true that delays occur to trains. Nay, more, let it be granted that they are frequent—but frequent in proportion to what?—to the number of trains that are running night and day throughout every part of the kingdom?” “Yes.” But the answer to that is—in 1865 3,448,509 passenger trains ran in the United Kingdom, which is at the rate of 10,387 trains each week day, and half that number is assumed as the number on Sundays, and on Christmas Day and Good Friday. Fewer long trains travel on Sundays than on week days, but on short urban and suburban railways the trains are, except during the hours of divine service, as numerous as on week days. Besides the passenger trains there were, in 1865, 2,108,198 goods trains, heavily laden with merchandise and minerals, or at the rate of 6,060 trains on each week day, and half that number on Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday, making a total each day of 16,447. At the end of 1865 there were, as has been frequently stated in these pages, 13,289 miles of railway open for traffic; at present (October, 1867) the number of miles is fully 14,300, and there cannot be less than 13,000 passenger trains a day. The proportion of trains arriving late to trains arriving to time is not three per cent. throughout the whole kingdom, and of those, nine-tenths are not more than fifteen minutes behind time. The average number of persons travelling each week day throughout the year is nearly 800,000; of these the very utmost that are detained beyond fifteen minutes is 3,000; so that for every 300 persons who travel per diem one must expect, on the doctrine of averages, to be over fifteen minutes late, and one out of every thirty-four passengers may be a few minutes over time. Judging by the tone and the language of many of the letters of complaint which appear in newspapers, if we could suppose such a person as one utterly ignorant of everything relating to railways, he would believe that the officials experience a special pleasure and enjoyment when trains are irregular. Let us, in reply, assure that excellent and ignorant person that there is nothing more abhorrent (with only one exception, to which we shall refer immediately) to railway nature than want of regularity and precision. They are to him precisely as the _vacuum abhorendum_ of Nature, Pan-Anglican and Pan-Mundal.[62] In everyday life, if things go punctually and precisely with us, the whole of our machinery, both corporeal and physical, works pleasantly, without trouble and without difficulty. And so it is on the railways—as long as there are punctuality and regularity all goes right. It is, therefore, the fact that the unceasing efforts of the staff of every railway company