consequences may be to them if a break down or accident take place. Yet, in spite of unceasing watchfulness, portions of the machinery of an engine will give way, at places, too, never expected. An engine may apparently be doing her duty admirably, when all of a sudden a tube—a great artery of her internal organisation—bursts. With us weak mortals an internal artery bursting lays us low for ever; and, although so dire a fate does not attend the engine, she is, for all the purposes that she was engaged upon at the moment of her disaster, as practically dead as if she had never been gifted with motive power. No human foresight can prevent these and similar, although minor, accidents to engines, no more than we can tell whether the apparently healthy and vigorous man of the morning may not be the cold and lifeless corpse of the afternoon. Yes, as long as we are human, and must depend upon human means (no matter how apparently complete and perfect they may be) for the fulfilment of our purposes, unrehearsed and unexpected incidents, leading to disappointment, annoyance, and vexation, are alike inevitable and unceasing. And so it is we have not, and never can have, PERFECTION on railways; but we have the nearest possible approach to it in all that relates to their working. This is a sentence that may possibly—nay, more probably will—excite the terrible susceptibility of the _genus_ which, without being “of the poets,” is, nevertheless, vastly irritable—the great and magnificent British public. Why, the very losses of temper we display whilst we exact perfection in others, is proof that we are a long way from possessing it ourselves. Should we not remember one of the earliest lessons taught us by our Saviour, from whom nothing but goodness and wisdom could ever flow?—“He that is without sin among you let him first cast a stone.” Cast the stone when you yourselves are perfect; without sin of thought or sin of action. But do we not witness daily, hourly, at each instant, that perfection does not belong to any of us? But let all men be assured of this—not on the testimony of quacks and nostrum-mongers, but on the undoubted evidence of fact—fact which is truth, pure, consistent, and unadulterated—that there does not exist in any one of the innumerable organisations, ramifications, aggregations, or embodiments throughout the empire a class of men that is more earnestly devoted to produce that near approach to perfection just referred to than among the well, yet often unjustly, abused humble servants of the railway community; for it is upon these men, in its last resource, that the public must depend for everything. At the stations of large towns and cities their individuality is naturally not so much noticed—or it might perhaps be more correctly stated, not so much known—as at smaller stations, being more completely mixed up in the immense human leaven of great populations. Still those of the public who frequent large stations know