Now, grandmother, only to think of Lord Nelson as a railway director on the Boulogne line to Paris! Well, I know you’ll say it, the world’s going to be turned upside down. Perhaps it is; and after all, it mightn’t be the worse now and then for a little wholesome shaking. They do say there’s to be a rail from Waterloo to Brussels, and the Duke of Wellington, the Iron Duke, with, I’ve no doubt, iron enough in him for the whole line, is to be chairman of the directors. The Prince Joinville is now and then looking about our coasts to find out, it is said, which is the softest part of us, in the case of a war, to put his foot upon us. Poor fellow! he’s got the disease of glory; only, as it sometimes happens with the smallpox, it has struck inward--it can’t come out upon him. When we’ve railways laid down, as I say, like a spider’s web all over the country, won’t it be a little hard to catch us asleep? For, you see, just like the spider’s web, the electric telegraph (inquire what sort of a thing it is, for I haven’t time to tell you)--the electric telegraph will touch a line of the web, when down will come a tremendous spider in a red coat with all sorts of murder about him! Mind, grandmother, let us hope it never will happen; but when folks who’d molest us, know it _can_ come about, won’t they let us alone? Depend upon it, we’re binding war over to keep the peace, and the bonds are made of railway iron! You’d hardly think it--you who used to talk to me about the beauty of glory (I know you meant nothing but the red coats and the fine epaulets; for that so often is woman’s notion of glory, though, bless ’em! they’re among the first to make lint, and cry over the sons of glory, with gashes spoiling all their fine feathers)--and you’d hardly think it, but they’re going to put up a statue to the man who first made boiling water to run upon a rail. It’s quite true: I read it only a day or two ago. They’re going to fix up a statue to George Stephenson at Newcastle. How you will cast up your dear old eyes when you hear of this! you, who’ve only thought that statues should be put up to Queen Anne, and George the Third, and his nice son, George the Fourth, and such people! I should only like a good many of the statues here in London, to be made to take a cheap train down to Newcastle, to see it. If, dirty as they are--and dirty as they were--they wouldn’t blush as red as a new copper halfpenny! Why, those statues--especially when they’ve queens and kings in ’em--are the most unfeelingest of metal! What a lot of mangled bodies, and misery, and housebreaking, and wickedness of all sorts, carried on and made quite lawful by a uniform, may we see--if we choose to see at all--about the statue of what is called a conqueror! What a firing of houses, what shame--that, because you’re a woman, I won’t more particularly write about--we might look upon under the statue, that is only so high, because it has so much