And, as regards personal locomotion, how grand and sublime are the powers of the railway. We leave Edinburgh to-night. We travel warmly in the cold season; luxuriously at all seasons, and with complete unconsciousness of the fact that as each hour passes, we are nearly forty miles farther from our starting point. The break at London in the morning gives us the margin necessary for ablution and refreshment; that evening we are in Paris, in ample time, and some to spare, for starting by any of the rapid trains that convey passengers and mails east, south, and west. If our destination be the Mediterranean, we are at Marseilles at noon the next day, exactly 41 hours from the time we had left Edinburgh; yet, Edinburgh, by railway, combined with a short sea passage, and Marseilles, are exactly 1,239 miles apart. Our pace, including breaks and stops, has been over thirty miles an hour, whilst getting over the whole distance; excluding the breaks and stops, five and thirty. We can commence the ascent of an Alpine pass, or one across the Pyrenees, precisely at the same time as we should reach the Mediterranean, had our destination been in that direction. In 1834, when the late Duke of Wellington despatched Mr. Hudson, belonging to one of the Government offices, to Rome, to inform Sir Robert Peel that he had been called upon by King William IV. to form a Ministry on the compulsive retirement of Lord Melbourne and his colleagues,[58] it was thought a marvel that the messenger was able to complete his journey on the twelfth day from that on which he left London. Bound on an analagous mission, a Mr. Hudson of the present day, would be a sluggard indeed, if he occupied even a quarter of twelve days. Without the superscription, such as our ancestors (who could write) put on their letters, “Haste! post haste!”[59] one put quietly into a London post office “receptacle” on a Monday morning, would, as the clock of St. Peter’s[60] was tolling 9·45 on Wednesday evening, be found within the precincts of the Eternal City. The distance? 1,355 miles.