The above catalogue is, undoubtedly, a melancholy one; one that it would, of course, have been all the better if it could have been avoided. But this, we say with deep sorrow and regret, is impossible. In the first place, as long as the working details of railways depend upon human hands and human heads, we shall have accidents. Some of the worst accidents that have taken place on railways have been caused by the sudden failure, not of presence of mind, for there was no circumstance of a peculiar nature to require it, but by an utter failure, a total absence, as it were, of mind, just at the very moment that, by no means a great, but still some, mental exertion or exercise of mind was requisite. Signal-men, perhaps the most careful and cautious persons in railway service—men selected for the position, after much previous drill, in consequence of superior steadiness, sobriety, and good conduct—find, too late, from some cause utterly unexplainable, that the lever of “points,” or of a signal has been turned to the left when it should have been turned to the right, or _vice versâ_. Fearful accidents occur from the machinery of the engine suddenly giving way, in consequence of which it leaves the rails, and the carriages behind it follow, and pile themselves one above another in a manner that is incredible to those who have not seen them. Other accidents arise from a sudden failure of portions of the permanent way; yet, possibly, the same permanent way has been carefully looked at by completely competent men only half-an-hour previous to the accident; for it may be mentioned, that there is no part of a railway road-bed that is not thoroughly examined every morning. In a line that is well signalled—and it may be taken for fact that there is no railway in the kingdom upon which there are not at present efficient signals—accidents are not the result of delays, although there is a very general belief in the minds of the public that it is otherwise. In two recent instances, accidents of a calamitous nature have been the result of a rail being taken up and not replaced before a train has come upon the spot; this description of accident having been chiefly caused by permanent-way signal-men not going sufficiently far back with the flag danger-signal to enable a train to be brought to a stand-still before arriving at the spot where the line is interrupted, other precautions have been added, which now render an accident from this cause nearly impossible. But many of the fearful collisions, the terrible accounts of which shock the public mind from time to time, are caused by combinations of circumstances and incidents so extraordinary and unusual, that it is hard to conceive, on the doctrine of combinations, how they could occur. They do occur, nevertheless; and all that can be said with respect of them is, that the circumstances of every railway accident are carefully read and studied by every