and occasional tempests of wind and rain, to which--we will say nothing of greater dangers--they have been exposed. The duties which the engine-driver has to perform are not only of vital importance, but of a nature which peculiarly illustrates the calm, unpretending, bull-dog courage, indigenous to the moist healthy climate of the British Isles. Even in bright sunshine, to stand--like the figure-head of a ship--foremost on a train of enormous weight, which, with fearful momentum, is rushing forward faster than any race-horse can gallop, requires a cool head and a calm heart; but to proceed at this pace in dark or foggy weather into tunnels, along embankments, and through deep cuttings, where it is impossible to foresee any obstruction, is an amount of responsibility which scarcely any other situation in life can exceed; for not only is a driver severely, and occasionally without mercy, punished for any negligence he himself may commit, but he is invariably sentenced personally to suffer on the spot for any accident that from the negligence of others may suddenly befall the road along which he travels, but over which he has not the smallest control. The greatest hardship he has to endure, however, is from cold, especially that produced in winter by evaporation from his drenched clothes passing rapidly through the air. Indeed, when a gale of wind and rain from the north-west, triumphantly sweeping over the surface of the earth at its ordinary rate of say sixty miles an hour, suddenly meets the driver of the London and North-Western, who has not only to withstand such an antagonist, but to dash through him, and in spite of him to proceed in an opposite direction at the rate of say forty miles an hour--the conflict between the wet Englishman and Æolus, tilting by each other at the combined speed of a hundred miles an hour, forms a tournament of extraordinary interest. As the engine is proceeding, the driver, who has not very many inches of standing-room, remains upon its narrow platform, while his fireman, on about the same space, stands close beside him on the tender. We tried the position. Everything, however, proved to be so hard, excepting the engine, which was both hard and hot, that we found it necessary to travel with one foot on the tender and the other on the engine, and, as the motion of each was very different, we felt as if each leg were galloping at a different stride. Nevertheless the Company’s drivers and firemen usually travel from 100 to 120 miles per day, performing six of these trips per week; nay, a few run 166 miles per day--for which they are paid eight days’ wages for six trips.