miles from Euston) would have completed their present journey, and they would have rested until they were harnessed to the “up mail,” and having brought it to London, their work of twenty-four hours would have been completed. But at seven miles from its starting point the iron horse would not have been more than four or five minutes at full running pace; three minutes in time and two miles in distance bring time-honoured Harrow in sight, “on the hill,” for its church is noticable from every point of the compass, and it was of it that Charles II. said, during a theological discussion in his presence, “the true visible church, as it could be seen everywhere.” Of its school,[77] founded in 1571 by John of Lyon, but one momentary view is obtained, and that is only as a day train darts along the valley that leads to Watford. The three most distinguished men of modern times who have received their education there have been Peel, Palmerston, and Byron.[78] The northern extremity of the long Watford tunnel, twenty miles from London, is reached just thirty-three minutes from the time of starting; yet it has been climbing work all the while, and the climbing work continues still farther to Tring, eleven miles more distant from London; but the hill is not so steep as it was at starting. Long it is; but Tring is, nevertheless, only some 750 feet higher than Euston, and some 350 feet higher than the top of the cross of the noblest Protestant Church in the world—St. Paul’s. Has the engine felt it? Not she. She has only shown that she knows the difference between a gradient of 1 in 80 and 1 in 300, by the bound she made into higher speed, as, escaping from the stiffer incline, she dashed on to more level ground through the Points of Camden. In the by-gone days of the early railway, the engine that could gain the heights of Tring without baiting on the way was a wonder. In 1844, when experiments were made preparatory to running express trains between London and Birmingham in three hours, the exultation was great when it was found that a tender could be constructed to hold water enough to convey a light train as far as Wolverton without stopping. Finality is an unknown element on the railway: Progress is its only pass-word. The tender was no sooner found capable of carrying water to Wolverton, than it was determined to extend the distance to Blisworth. Not very long afterwards the run was increased to Rugby, twenty miles farther. Engines and trains have for some years run these eighty-two miles without stoppage; but of late the water-crane has been supplemented by the water-trough, of which we shall take occasion to speak presently. From Tring to Leighton the ground is gone over in nearly as few minutes as there are miles—one only conspicuous object being visible in the intervening distance—the noble house built, not ten years ago, for the great Rothschild, by the still greater Paxton.