It is now already a year that the locomotive has been rolling over the St. Gothard road, crossing at a flash the distance separating Basle from Milan, and passing rapidly from the dark and damp defiles of German Switzerland into the sun lit plains of Lombardy. Our neighbors uproariously feted the opening of this great international artery, which they consider as their personal and exclusive work, as well from a technical point of view as from that of the economic result that they had proposed to attain--the creation of a road which, in the words of Bismarck, "glorifies no other nation." As regards the piercing of the Gothard, the initiative does, in fact, belong by good right to the powerful "Iron Chancellor," so we have never dreamed of robbing Germany of the glory (and it is a true glory) of having created the second of the great transalpine routes, that open to European products a new gate to the Oriental world. It seems to us, however, that in the noisy concert of acclamations that echoed during the days of the fetes over the inauguration of the line, a less modest place might have been made for those who, with invincible tenacity and rare talent, directed the technical part of the work, and especially those 15 kilometers of colossal boring--the great St. Gothard Tunnel, which ranks in the history of great public works side by side with the piercing of the Frejus, and the marvelous digging of Suez and Panama. We recall just now the names of those who, during nearly ten years, have contributed with entire disinterestedness to the completion of this colossal work. Over all stands a figure of very peculiar originality--that of M. Louis Favre, the general contractor of the great tunnel, whose name will remain attached to the creation of this work through the Helvetian Alps, like that of Sommeiller to the great tunnel of the Frejus, and that of De Lesseps to the artificial straits that henceforward join the oceans. Having myself had the honor of occupying the position of general secretary of the enterprise under consideration, I have been enabled to make a close acquaintance with the man who was so remarkable in all respects, and who, after passing his entire life in great public works, died like a soldier on the field of honor--in the depths of the tunnel. [Illustration: LOUIS FAVRE.] [Illustration: THE DOWNFALL OF THE TITANS, CONQUERED BY THE GENIUS OF MAN. (Monument at Turin to Commemorate the Tunneling of the Alps.)]