Holborn, Newgate Street, Cheapside, and to the Bank of England. Let us look at “above the level of the sea” in another light. The staircase height of each of the houses we have referred to is about sixty feet, a fatiguing ascension even for the lightest of us. The summit of the Mont Cenis Pass is exactly 111 times 60. The top of St. Paul’s Cathedral is 404 feet from the ground at St. Paul’s Churchyard. The summit of the Mont Cenis Pass is sixteen and a half times higher. Elevation by steps is only available for man, and for man’s ever faithful, as well as for man’s doubtfully faithful, companions, the dog and the cat. They therefore are able to ascend and descend a _staircase_ gradient of 1 in 2; not so all other useful and domestic animals—the horse, the mule, the sheep, and the cow can only go along a continuous roadway; the mountain goat can skip occasionally from rock to rock, but its normal step is that of the other animals we have just enumerated. Were the steps of a staircase covered over, say with boards, and the ascent made uniform, man could not ascend or descend a gradient of 1 in 2, 1 in 3, 1 in 4, and scarcely 1 in 5. He could not, in fact, ascend or descend the last-named gradient without having something beside him to hold on by. But the muscles of man’s legs, and the organisation of his feet, enable him, by one of the innumerable and beautiful arrangements of the all-provident Creator, to ascend elevations by steps with complete facility, and at any moment. The steepest gradient that a horse can ascend or descend for any distance with a load is 1 in 10; occasionally there are short slopes in roads, especially old ones, of 1 in 6 or 7, but they overtax muscular strength in which ever direction an animal is going. It is a good mountain road the gradient of which does not exceed 1 in 15, or 352 feet in a mile, excellent, if it be anything like 1 in 20, or 264 feet in a mile. A strong, well-fed English horse with a moderate load behind him, could trot up this latter gradient for a short distance, and then he would fall into a walking pace, but he would draw a heavier load and with less distress to himself if he be started at a walk and be never pressed out of it.