It has been justly observed that “England is bound over to keep the peace by a national debt, or penalty, of 800 millions.” During the glorious expenditure of all this money, the attention of the country was solely engrossed with the art, employment, occupation, and victories of war. Our great statesmen were war-ministers--our great men were naval and military warriors of all ranks, whose noble bearing and gallant feats were joyfully announced, and, by universal acclamation, as gratefully rewarded; and if every man who took a government contract, or who in any way came into contact with government, easily made a large fortune by war, he, generally speaking, as rapidly spent it; and thus an artificial circulation of wealth was kept up, which, like the schoolboy’s mode of warming himself, commonly called “beating the booby,” produced a temporary glow, estimated at the moment to be of as much value as if it had naturally proceeded from the heart. The English people during the period in question drank hard. The rule had scarcely an exception. As regularly as four o’clock P.M. struck, our noblemen, magistrates, judges, hunting squires, and country gentlemen, began to look a little flushed--the colour gradually increasing, until in due time they all became, like their sun in a fog, red in the face. Before bedtime the semi-rulers of the nation were half inebriated--some of our leading statesmen being, alas! notoriously, very nearly in the same state. No sooner, however, were the British people, by the results of 1815, suddenly weaned from war, than their extraordinary natural powers, moral as well as physical, invigorated by comparative temperance, were directed to investigations, occupations, and studies which rapidly produced their own rewards. Indeed, without entering into details, the wealth which has been created and amassed since the period in question, added to that with which we have not only irrigated, but almost without metaphor top-dressed the greater portion of the old as well as of the new world, and, lastly, the extraordinary improvements that have taken place in light, heat, locomotion--electrical as well as by steam-power--machinery, in short in everything that administers to human comfort, form altogether the golden harvest of our labours; and thus, although to our eminent civil engineers considerable credit is due, they are, in fact, but secondary causes; the engineer-in-chief--the primary inventor--the real constructor of our railways most indisputably being THE GODDESS OF PEACE. Send her victorious--happy and glorious-- Long to reign over us--God save that queen! THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE LINE. 1. In considering the project of a railway, after fixing upon the two termini, it becomes necessary to select the towns through which it ought to pass.