It would, perhaps, be difficult to find a stronger contrast in illustration of the increased facilities of travelling which railways in India afford, than is to be found in Bishop Heber’s celebrated journal, written about 1824, and in Mr. James Caird’s letters describing his recent visit to India in 1879. They both covered nearly the same ground, though their routes lay in different directions. The Bishop started eastwards by boat from Calcutta to Dacca. He took six weeks on his journey, and his chaplain died of illness contracted on the way. By railway and steamer Mr. Caird travelled from Calcutta to Dacca in about twenty-four hours. The Bishop set out again in his boat from Dacca to Allahabad, and accomplished the distance, which is about seven hundred miles, in nearly three months. Mr. Caird was enabled to cover the same distance by railway and steamer in three days. The Bishop went forth on horseback from Allahabad with a military escort to protect his tents and baggage, and made an erratic journey through the then independent province of Oude, and to the hill-station of Almora, and eventually through the principal cities of Rajpootana and Western India until he reached Bombay. This pilgrimage necessarily lasted for several months, as his progress was at the rate of about ten miles a day. Mr. Caird, by the help of the railways, started from Bombay and reached Allahabad, after visiting Oude, in about ten days. In fact a fortnight, or at the longest a month, is now deemed amply sufficient time for the travelling tourist to do India. And what is the result? In Bishop Heber’s journal the reader will find a series of faithful and kindly observations on the ways and manners of the people amongst whom he lived and journeyed day after day, whilst his remarks on the state of the crops are sound and intelligent, as being based on his own practical knowledge of the cultivation of the glebe of his English parish. In the letters of Mr. Caird and in other modern travellers, we find too many hasty conclusions such as are usually formed from rapid and imperfect observation. Mr. Caird’s knowledge of English agriculture may be unrivalled, but he had about the same opportunity of forming an opinion on Indian agriculture and the various measures necessary for its development, as the hero of the old story in “Scholasticus,” who was expected to form an opinion of a house from the inspection of a single brick.