Passing _by_, but not through this massive portal, we arrive at the actual station, and thence at the platform, whence, in the magnificent language of penny-a-lining,[74] we are so shortly to be “hurled along through the atmosphere at singularly rapid—it might almost be said marvellously terrific speed of forty-five miles an hour.” Not being historiographers for Mr. Frith, R.A., we do not intend to give any account of the persons whom he truly, but not with such intense artistic effect as in the “Derby Day,” depicts, as those who fill a railway platform just before a train is starting. We must therefore not say anything of the unconscious or indifferent old gentleman, who so placidly reads his newspaper, within six inches of the two broad-brimmed detectives, one of whom dangles the “bracelets” into the view of the foiled and agonised culprit, compelled to convert an intended migration into forced residence in Newgate. We must also leave unrecorded about heaving porters, rushing guards, precipitous newsboys, friends parting—some with lurking tears, some with tears more open—some with scarce suppressed pleasure and fervent hope, as they affectionately squeeze each other’s hands, that they may never meet again, at all events on this side of Jordan; all these must we pass by, that we may show to the engine driver and his “mate” the order, which gives us the privilege of placing ourselves, with them, on the footplate of the engine. There she is—manacled with harness that Vulcan presided at the forging of—smoke-vomiting, steam-emitting, snorting, bubbling inside, grunting, growling—hissing too, with an intensity equal to the combined and concentrated hissing of ten thousand offended and irritated cats, additioned with the hissing of at least the like number of angry birds, the hissing of one of which was enough to save from capture Roman Capitol, ancient Rome’s strongest fortress, 365 years after Roman City had been created.