If the reader will refer to page 16 _ante_, he will see that we left an imaginary travelling companion of ours, to refresh himself at one of the innumerable restaurants of Paris, whilst we were to employ the time in giving some account of the four greatest existing railways in Europe, and of the Pacific Union Railroad, now constructing across the continent of North America. But one thing has led to another, and descriptions which we had originally intended should only occupy some fifty or sixty pages, have grown to more than 200. We now revert to our original plan, which is, to take the reader, in the shape of an imaginary traveller, to the Mont Cenis Railway, and having given the best explanation of it in our power, to impart (_apropos_ of the Tunnel of the Alps) the information we have recently collected about tunnels, ancient and modern, canal and railway, in Great Britain, and in other parts of the world. From the Alps, we shall proceed, by means of the existing railways, to the extreme south-eastern end of Italy, whence we shall cross over to Sicily, the most southern part of Europe to which railways extend. In this manner we propose to bring the present volume to a conclusion. Taking place in the train of the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway, at the Mazas Station, built nearly opposite to Paris’s great prison of the same name, we travel on the main line, 275 miles, as far as Lamartine’s birthplace, Macon, forty-four miles short of Lyons, and 262 short of Marseilles, which is 537 miles from Paris. We must leave the detailed description of the route to _Murray’s Hand Books_, of which Hand Hooks in general we have recently said, and now repeat, that an experience of upwards of thirty years’ very frequent travelling in many parts of the continent enables us to state that, for lucid description, accuracy, and impartiality, they are the only English ones that completely merit the confidence of the public. _Per contra_, the omissions and inaccuracies met with in other so-called “Guides” are a source of continual annoyance and disappointment to the inexperienced continental traveller. To mention only one instance, a Hand Book which we were assured, at the office of its publication, was published in June 1866 (of course there is no date of publication on the title-page), is, with a few trifling alterations, a reprint of pages in stereotype published twelve or thirteen years previously, and the routes given to reach the country which it professes to describe are those that were in use, by ordinary road and by steam-boat, until railways, opened now between six and ten years, superseded them.