£385,000
Returns.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   126,780
                               --------
Annual deficiency  .  .  .  .  £258,220
                               --------
    To meet an outlay of £7,500,000.

“But the probability is that canals would reduce their rates one-half; and thus, competing wholesomely, extinguish the railway.  The coach-masters would do the same thing—run for twelve months at half the present fares, and then not one man in his senses would risk his bones on the railway.  The innkeepers would follow a course precisely similar, and give nice smoking dinners, foaming tankards and bottles of beeswing at so cheap a rate, and meet their customers with so good humoured faces, and do so many of those kind offices that legions would flock to the hospitable road.  And while all this was going on, and the thousands of men which the authors of this ridiculous scheme had expected to send upon the parish were thriving, the solitary stranger who had nobody to tell him better would go swinging at the tail of the engine, bumping first on the iron plates on this side and then on the iron plates on that side; and if he escaped being scalded to death by the bursting of his engine, or having all his bones broken by collision with another, he would be fain to rest for the night within some four bare walls and gnaw a mouldy crust which he brought in his pocket, or, as an alternative of luxury, wade some ten miles through the mire, and feast upon a rasher of rusty bacon and a tankard of the smallest ale at the nearest hedge alehouse.”

All this now sounds inexpressibly droll, and yet this prophet of evil was not entirely wrong; nay, in some important particulars he was more right than the railway promoters, whom he so heartily detested.  The railway did cost nearly seven millions instead of four millions as calculated by the projectors, and the cost of working before the amalgamation with the Grand Junction did amount to £380,000 per annum: two figure facts which would have effectually crushed speculation could they have been proved in 1831; but then the per contra of traffic was equally astounding in its overflow, instead of one-third of the existing traffic, or £126,780 a-year allowed by the pamphleteer, the London and Birmingham earned a gross revenue of nearly £900,000, while still leaving a traffic in heavy goods on the canals sufficient to pay from £6 to £30 per cent. to the proprietors, in spite of a reduction of rates of upwards of £50 per cent.  Indeed this traffic actually increased on the Grand Junction Canal, since the opening of the Birmingham Railway, from £750,000 in 1836, to £1,160,000 in 1847.

Perhaps on no point would the expectation of the most sanguine among the early projectors of railways been more satisfactorily exceeded than in regard to safety.  Swiftness, and cheapness, and power, acute intelligent engineers foresaw; but that millions of passengers should be whirled along at a speed varying from twenty to fifty miles an hour with more safety than they could have secured by walking a-foot, would have seemed an anticipation of the very wildest character.  Yet such is the case.  In 1850, upwards of seventy millions of souls were conveyed by railway; when eleven passengers were killed and fifty-four injured, or less than one to each million of passengers conveyed.

Even at the risk of seeming trite, prosy, and common-place, it is right to remind the young generation who consider the purchase of a railway ticket gives them a right to grumble at a thousand imaginary defects and deficiencies in railway management, how great are the advantages in swiftness, economy, and safety, which they enjoy through the genius, enterprise, and stubborn perseverance of George Stephenson and his friends and pupils in 1825.

EUSTON STATION.

This station was an after-thought, the result of early experience in railway traffic.  Originally the line was to have ended at Camden Town, but a favourable opportunity led to the purchase of fifteen acres, which has turned out most convenient for the public and the proprietors.  It is only to be regretted that it was not possible to bring the station within a few yards of the New Road, so as to render the stream of omnibuses between Paddington and the City available, without compelling the passenger to perspire under his carpet-bag, railway-wrapper, umbrella, and hat-box, all the way from the platform to the edge of Euston Square.

The great gateway or propylæum is very imposing, and rather out of place; but that is not the architect’s fault.  It cost thirty thousand pounds, and had he been permitted to carry out his original design, no doubt it would have introduced us to some classic fane in character with the lofty Titanic columns: for instance, a temple to Mercury the winged messenger and god of Mammon.  But, as is very common in this country,—for familiar examples see the London University, the National Gallery, and the Nelson Column,—the spirit of the proprietors evaporated with the outworks; and the gateway leads to a square court-yard and a building the exterior of which may be described, in the language of guide books when referring to something which cannot be praised, as “a plain, unpretending, stucco structure,” with a convenient wooden shed in front, barely to save passengers from getting wet in rainy weather.

As Melrose should be seen by the fair moonlight, so Euston, to be viewed to advantage, should be visited by the gray light of a summer or spring morning, about a quarter to six o’clock, three-quarters of an hour before the starting of the parliamentary train, which every railway, under a wise legislative enactment, is compelled to run “once a-day from each extremity, with covered carriages, stopping at every station, travelling at a rate of not less than fifteen miles an hour, at a charge of one-penny per mile.”  We say wise, because the competition of the Railway for goods, as well as passengers, drove off the road not only all the coaches, on which, when light-loaded, foot-sore travellers got an occasional lift, but all the variety of vans and broad-wheeled waggons which afforded a slow but cheap conveyance between our principal towns.

At the hour mentioned, the Railway passenger-yard is vacant, silent, and as spotlessly clean as a Dutchman’s kitchen; nothing is to be seen but a tall soldier-like policeman in green, on watch under the wooden shed, and a few sparrows industriously yet vainly trying to get breakfast from between the closely packed paving-stones.  How different from the fat debauched-looking sparrows who throve upon the dirt and waste of the old coach yards!

It is so still, so open; the tall columns of the portico entrance look down on you so grimly; the front of the booking-offices, in their garment of clean stucco, look so primly respectable that you cannot help feeling ashamed of yourself,—feeling as uncomfortable as when you have called too early on an economically genteel couple, and been shown into a handsome drawing-room, on a frosty day, without a fire.  You cannot think of entering into a gossip with the Railway guardian, for you remember that “sentinels on duty are not allowed to talk,” except to nursery maids.

Presently, hurrying on foot, a few passengers arrive; a servant-maid carrying a big box, with the assistance of a little girl; a neat punctual-looking man, probably a banker’s clerk on furlough; and a couple of young fellows in shaggy coats, smoking, who seem, by their red eyes and dirty hands, to have made sure of being up early by not going to bed.  A rattle announces the first omnibus, with a pile of luggage outside and five inside passengers, two commercial travellers, two