READER! have you ever travelled on a locomotive? We believe not; at least there have been very few of you of the male sex, none of you of the gentler—for there is a law on railways like that of masonry, railway engines are “tiled” against crinoline.[71] If one of you should, peradventure, ever succeed in bounding the barrier, you will, like Miss Aldworth[72] a hundred years ago, be sworn to keep the secret for life,—and we are sure you will keep it. We, however, have been permitted to travel on the engine from London to Stafford and back again, and not having been sworn to secrecy, we venture to give a brief account of the journey. It is not to be supposed that going through the air at the rate of between forty and fifty miles an hour is disagreeable. It is not so, unless the weather be severe and trying; but in fine, and especially warm weather, the rapid movement creates a feeling of much pleasure and enjoyment. It is only when amateurs do not travel on railway engines that the real hardships of locomotive driving can be appreciated; of late years, however, the little wooden fencing, with oval glass window on each side, the whole technically called a “cab,” gives an amount of protection which materially lessens hardship in inclement weather. It may be considered, as a general rule, that there are on an average, twelve men employed on each mile of railway in the United Kingdom. Taking the present length of railways as 14,300 miles,[73] this would make the number about 172,000. Of course on many of the railways, especially on those opened in recent years, which are single lines, and run through districts where the population is sparse and the trains infrequent, there is nothing like that average number employed. But, on the other hand, the unceasing increase of business, especially in goods and mineral traffic, on all the leading railways that connect important places together, necessitates continued increase of staff; hence it is that the number of men directly employed is very nearly the same per mile as it was seven or eight-and-twenty years ago. The engine drivers and firemen constitute about a twelfth of the total staff of railway companies. One of the oldest railways guide books published, gives exact directions how to arrive at Euston Station from other parts of the town, and we are told to take special notice of the “Grand Facade at Euston Grove.” The centre of it is the Doric portico built by Hardwich, used by nobody, which, however, cost shareholders no less than £40,000. No wonder, seeing that it contains not less than 75,000 cubic feet of Yorkshire freestone, several of the blocks of which, weighed upwards of thirteen tons each.