the Pasha has ordered a fresh party of hunt- ticable. In order to force those who cannot ing soldiers to proceed up the river, as far as afford it into the first-class, second and thirdthe White Nile, to search for another young class carriages are only one and two degrees hippopotamus-a female! We may, there- removed from cattle pens. And that these fore, look forward to the unrivalled fame of should not be too delicious, the humbler order possessing a royal pair-" sure such a pair" of passengers will not easily forget that a as were never yet seen in any collection of director once proposed to hire a number of Natural History-to say nothing of the chance chimney-sweeps to render-what, with the of a progeny. These are national questions, best company, are nothing better than loco-why should they be cabinet secrets! motive hutches-perfectly untenable.

We are certainly a strange people—we They manage these things better abroad. English. Our indefatigable energies and There a detestable class-feeling-a contemptible matchless wealth often exhibit themselves purse-worship, which rigidly separates people in eccentric fancies. No wonder, foreigners- according to their pecuniary circumstances; philosophers and all-are so much puzzled which metes out the smallest privilege or what to make of us. They point to the comfort at a price-does not exist to preunaided efforts of a Waghorn, and to his vent the managers of railways from making widow's pension-mite-and then they point the journeys of their customers and supto our hippopotamus! Truly, it is not easy porters as pleasant as possible. On the to reply to the inference, and impossible to French railroads, (setting aside the question evade it. We have had a Chaucer and a that the fares are much lower,) the secondMilton, a Hobbes, and a Newton, a Watt and class carriages are comfortably cushioned, a Winsor; and we have had other great poets, having pretty silk blinds to keep out the sun; and philosophers, and machinists, and men of windows that really are capable of being pulled learning and science, and have several of each up and down, besides hooks for hats,— a great now living among us: but any amount of a convenience on a journey. For the blinds, inpeople's anxious interest, which the present deed, an enterprising blind-maker in France state of popular education induces, is very agreed to furnish them to one railway comlimited indeed compared to that which is felt pany, gratis, on condition that they used no by all classes for a Tom Thumb, a Jim Crow, other for a certain number of years, and allowed or our present Idol. Howbeit, as the last is him to make them the medium of his adverreally a great improvement on the two former tisements. Talk of advertising vans-can they fascinating exotics, it is to be hoped that we be compared to the brilliant notion of advershall, in course of time, more habitually dis- tising railways-trains of puffs, wafting the play some kind of discrimination in the objects genius of inventors faster than the wind! We of our devotion. throw out the hint to the "advertising world” in this country.

CHIPS.

RAILWAY COMFORT

In winter, even in an English first-class carriage, there is no protection against frost and damp; but in nearly all the foreign railways, no sooner does the winter set in than Is all the utilities of Railway travelling, the first-class traveller finds the bottom of his England is supreme. Speed, represented by carriage provided with a long tin case full of from thirty to sixty miles an hour, "just (to hot water. In the cold months, masses of quote the words of Lubin Log) as the passenger woollen cloth and railway wrappers, are seen pleases;" punctuality, that admits of the setting shaking in the corners of first-class English of watches by arrivals and departures; and carriages with shivering, comfortless, human safety, exemplified by the loss of no human beings inside them, despairing of any sort of life from any other cause than the carelessness warmth whatever.

of the sufferer, during the past two years, Comfort in railway travelling is, however are proofs of British supremacy in locomotion. brought to the highest perfection in Germany. Yet-by a strange perversity not easily An esteemed correspondent at Vienna writes accounted for in a country known all over to us on this subject in the following terms:the rest of the world as the Kingdom of On the "Wiener-Neustäder Eisenbahn," (the Comfort the point apparently aimed at is Vienna and Neustadt Railway), the carto render the transit of the human frame as riages of the first, second, and third-class uncomfortable an operation as possible. Every may each be said to resemble a spacious room, elegance and luxury is bestowed upon waiting- furnished with seats, something like a concertrooms where extreme punctuality renders it room, and having a broad passage down the unnecessary for people to wait; and upon middle. Thus one may get up, walk towards refreshment-rooms in which travellers are a friend a dozen seats off; or, if you require allowed ten minutes to scald themselves with more air or a change of position, you will find boiling coffee, or to choke themselves with im- the backs of the seats shift so as to enable you possible pork-pies; but carriages in which tra- to turn round, and sit down the other way vellers have to be cramped up, often for hours, without inconvenience to any one. I need and sometimes for whole days, are apparently not say that on this railway there is no contrived to inflict as much torture as prac-struggle for "that corner place with your back

Cheapness, but,' says I, 'it's dishonest. A fair trader has no right to sell an article at less than its first cost.'

"No right!' says she. And I dessay he thinks he has no right to starve. It's very hard to judge. The young tradesman, with his little capital and knowledge of a trade, has got his sweetheart and his ambition. He must wedge into society somehow, and he begins with the sharp end.'

"But,' says I, 'it isn't sharp, Mrs. Bezzle.' "So she shakes her head; says she, 'I'll give you an example which is true, and one out of a many.'

"Well, who would have thought it? Next week Mrs. Bezzle's business was to sell. The week after, it was sold. The week after that, Mrs. Bezzle and her son Tom, and Tom's wife, and Tom's brother Sam, and Mrs. Bezzle's eldest daughter, and little James, and Sarah, and Mary Ann, and the two little urchins, were on board a ship, at Liverpool, bound for Port Philip. That's a year, come Michaelmas,

ago.

"But, drat 'em, why didn't they pay the postage? Two-and-two is a consideration when butter (best fresh) is a rising a penny a pound every week. Not but what I was glad "I once knew an excellent young man to hear from Mrs. Bezzle. Tom and his wife, who died of cholera. He left a widow and his brother Sam, are settled in a 'run;' and three little children. After deducting and though there was some words I couldn't all expenses for her husband's burial, the make out, I dare say they didn't explain how widow found that she possessed a hundred a 'run' could be a settlement. Quite the pounds. With fear and trembling, she em- reverse!' as Mrs. Jenks said-(I have made barked this money, in an effort to sup- it up with her, though she did insinuate the port herself. With it she fitted up a little gingerbread-nuts the mad bull made me buy shop, and had begun to earn a livelihood, gave her babby the cholera; and, bless it! it

when-
"Well, Mrs. Bezzle, what prevented
her?'

was only the teeth after all). Mrs. Bezzle has settled herself in the mutton-pie and cheesecake line, and has no fear of opposition; and An empty house close by was taken as in Port Philip there is good digestions and by another person following her trade. Im- plenty of 'em, pies is popular. Prices, too, is mediately her receipts diminished. One can- better,-penny pies being tuppence. James not live except by bread that can be got out is on the run,' along with his eldest brother. of a neighbour's cupboard. The widow and Sarah an't married yet,-for out of six offers, the children have already lost eighty pounds, a young gal of seventeen has a right to be have only twenty left; their house is taken by the year, and so they still are in it; and the poor lost woman cannot be comforted. Her hope is gone.'

"Heigh, dear,' says I, 'it wasn't so in my young days. I believe this is owing to overpopulation,' says I.

"Well,' says Mrs. Bezzle, perking up. 'It's cruel to blame us for our struggles. What if I have got nine, and six on 'em dependant on penny tarts and gingerbread for meat, drink, washing, and lodging, are they to be thrown in my teeth?'

"Emigrate,' says I, six times more pointedly than before.

"Where to?' says she, and how? Who can tell me that?'

puzzled for six months or so, and more dropping in every week. Mary Anne is family governess to a rich copper-man, with plenty of stock-I suppose by that he is in the soup line. However, all is doing well.

"Well, Mr. Conductor, it was all owing to that bull, wasn't it? If I hadn't improved that solemn occasion, where would Mrs. Bezzle, and four out of six of her helpless offspring have been by this time ?—why, in the workhus."

LUNGS FOR LONDON.

TRAVELLERS describe nothing to be so much dreaded by the people of the East as a flight of locusts, except indeed a settlement of locusts. When those devouring insects alight "Go and lay your case before Parson Pull-on the fields and pastures, they begin from away; he knows our M.P., and he knows all a centre composed of myriads, and eat up about colonial places. Hasn't his brother's everything green within radii extending wife's first cousin got one of them? He is over not acres, but miles. They fall upon Sab-under-Secretary to Lord Oxfordmixture, gardens and leave them deserts; and upon who has all the emigration settlements under a field they do not permit so much as a blade his thumb.' of grass to indicate where grass was. "I'll think about it,' says Mrs. Bezzle, Although, in fact, these little devastators quite struck-like,-for down came the scales do not trouble us; in effect, Londoners are on the counter like a shot, and the whole the victims of equally efficient destroyers of ounce of sugar-candy jumped into the little their green places. boy's apron of its own accord. He had come Bricklayers are spreading the webs and for two penn'orth on pretence of a cough. meshes of houses with such fearful rapidity 'Besides, didn't Mr. Pullaway christen seven in every direction, that the people are being out of my nine children, and not a penny of gradually confined within narrow prisons, the fees owing for?' only open at the top for the admission of

"The last word as ever I spoke to Mrs. Bezzle what would be air if it were not smoke. was, Emigrate!' Suburban open spaces are being entombed in

brick-and-mortar mausoleums for the suffocation as well as for the accommodation of an increasing populace; who, if they wish to get breath, can find nowhere to draw it from, short of a long journey. The Lungs of London have undergone congestion, and even their cells are underground.

Of all the neighbourhoods of which London is a collection, Finsbury and Islington have suffered most. Within the recollection of middle-aged memories, Clerkenwell Green was of the right colour; Moorfields, Spafields, and the East India Company's Fields, were adorned with grass; and he must be young indeed who cannot remember cricket-playing in White Conduit, Canonbury, Shepherd and Shepherdess, Rhodes, and Laycock's, besides countless acres of other "Fields," which are now blotted out from the face of the Country to become Town, in the densest sense of the word. Thanks to the window tax and the bricklayer, fresh air will be thoroughly bricked out, unless a vigorous effort be made to stop the invasion of burnt clay and

water.

A single difficulty seems to stand in the way; one little thing needful is only required to turn the project into an accomplished fact, and that is, the money,-one hundred and fifty thousand pounds merely. Mr. Lloyd and his coadjutors have, we believe, mentioned their little difficulty at the Treasury, and are awaiting an answer. This state of things would form a curious problem for De Morgan, Quetelet, or others learned in the doctrine of probabilities: given, official routine multiplied by systematic delay, what are the chances of the cash required within the present generation?

A park for Finsbury is too urgent a demand for a dense population to allow of much time being wasted in knocking at the door of the Treasury. The public must bestir themselves in the scheme, and it will soon be accomplished and carried out.

THE LOVE OF NATURE.

WHERE the green banners of the forest float,
Where, from the Sun's imperial domain,
Armour'd in gold, attentive to the note
Of piping birds, the sturdy trees remain,
Those never-angered armics; where the plain
Boasts to the day its bosom ornaments

Of corn and fruitage; where the low refrain
Of seaside music song on song invents,
Laden with placid thought, whereto the heart

assents,

Often I wander. Nor does the light Noon,

Garrulous to man's eye, declaring all

That Morning pale (watched by her spectre moon,
Or solemn Vesper, seated near the pall
Of Day) holds unrevealed; nor does the fall
Of curtain on our human pantomime,

The sweeping by of Day's black funeral Through Night's awe-stricken realms, with tread sublime,

Mr. Lloyd, a gentleman of Islington who dreamt a few years since that he lived in the country, but has recently awoke to the conviction that his once suburban residence has been completely incorporated with the town, determined, if possible, to arrest the invasion of habitations. His plan is to dam out the flood of encroachment by emparking a large space at Islington for the behoof of the Borough of Finsbury, which contains a population of three hundred thousand panting souls. This space is, according to his plan, that which surrounds the village of Highbury, one of the highest and airiest suburbs of London. It is within two miles of the City, and might be rendered accessible to Victoria Park in the east, and to Regent's Park in the west. The proposed enclosure will take in a good| portion of the course of the New River, and a large quantity of ground so well and picturesquely wooded, that a paling and a name are only requisite to convert it at once into a park. In shape the enclosure would be a triangle, the base of which is the Holloway Road and Hopping Lane, and the apex, a point at which the Seven Sisters' Road"I joins the Green Lanes. The extent of these grounds is about three hundred acres, and the total cost of securing them to the public is THE PRESERVATION OF LIFE FROM not more than one hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

Mr. Lloyd has been vigorously agitating this matter for more than nine years, and yet—such is the pace at which the public are apt to move in affairs in which the public alone is itself concerned-it is only lately that he has obtained an attentive hearing for his plan.

Chiefly delight my heart; beauty pervades all time.
Morning: the Day is innocent, and weeps;

Noon: she is wedded and enjoys the Earth;
Evening wearied of the world she sleeps.
Night watches till another Day has birth.
The innocence of Morning, and the mirth
Of Noon, the holy calm of Eventide,

The watching while Day is not, there is dearth Of joy within his soul who hath not cried: welcome all, O God,-share all Thou wilt provide !"

SHIPWRECK.

IT is a difficult matter to reconcile with the sympathy, which it is well-known the sufferings of the unfortunate always receive in England, the apparent apathy which exists among the public, on a subject so important as the preservation of Life from Shipwreck. Several pleas in extenuation have been urged by those most interested. In the first place, there is that natural hardihood and contempt of danger in the English sailor, which

A prospect of success appears now, however, to dawn. Public meetings have been lately held in every district concerned, in which every sort of co-operation has been promised. occasionally, impossible to tame down to any

is,

thing like prudence and forethought. This further a-head, where it ought to have indomitable spirit of emulation and daring, been, according to the chart; and some is found to be the greatest enemy to the from other causes, more or less easily averted. adoption of any of those appliances which These losses are attended by the almost science has rendered available. The Deal incredible destruction of a thousand lives, boatman trusts his life in precisely the same and the value of tens of thousands of pounds sort of craft that his father, and his father's sterling. father, did before him. Confident in, and The shocking wreck of the Orion-not, we proud of, the skill which he has inherited say with sorrow, the last occurrence of the from them, he scorns to tarnish, as he falsely kind-startled, for a moment, the public from reasons, his name by the habitual use of buoy their culpable apathy. But the shock passed or belt, lest those of his comrades who are away; and attention to this subject is gradufirmly entrenched behind their ancient pre-ally subsiding into the usual indifference. judices, should set him down as faint-hearted, The details of this catastrophe ought to have and unworthy the honourable name of a had a more permanent effect on the public "Deal boatman." mind. In the moment of danger, the gear

The still more inaccessible Scotch fisher- of the boats was so imperfect, that these could man, with his four thousand piscatory breth- only be released from their davits by capren, "shoots his nets" on the exposed coast sising their human cargoes into the deep. of Caithness, in the open boat used by his Even when they righted, they immediately ancestors, notwithstanding the evil conse-filled, for the plug-holes were actually unquences which have often ensued. The latest stopped. The most ordinary precautions for example of the ill effects of this tenacity of saving life were not at hand, as precautions. opinion occurred two years since, when a The hen-coops, barrels, seats, combings, fearful gale, which did more or less damage and other means of escape, by which many along the whole eastern face of England and were saved, were purely accidental lifeScotland, wrecked and damaged a hundred preservers. and twenty-four of their boats, drowned a hundred men, and occasioned a loss to the fishing community of above seven thousand pounds, which, although a large sum, will not bear any comparison with the misery and destitution thus entailed upon the widows and orphans of the lost.

It is impossible to say how many of these unfortunate men might have been saved, had they had proper harbours to run for, with lights and beacons to warn, and life-boats to afford assistance; proper boats to keep the sea, and buoys and belts, as a last resource; but surely we are warranted in thinking that fully one half would have been left among us.

Every English ship, before leaving port, should be submitted to a supervising power similar to the inspection that emigrant ships undergo, in order that it should be certifie that means, both simple and efficacious, for the safety of the passengers and crew, exist on boa d-boats, belts, mattresses, rafts; everything, in short, that can add to the security of those about to " 'go down to the sea in ships."

That this sort of supervision is effectual, is proved by the few disasters which happen to the vessels of the Royal Navy. In these ships, everything is not only kept in its proper place, to be ready when wanted, but each man is constantly exercised in what he is to do with In both these examples, it must be ac- it when no danger is apprehended, that he knowledged that it would be a useless effort may be in a state of prompt efficiency when it is. to attempt any sudden innovations on these The Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterradeeply-seated prejudices; the only thing that nean squadron can step on board any one of his can be done, in either case, is to let the new ships in the middle of the night; and although principle quietly work of itself. Let us find three-fourths of its crew are asleep in their a life-belt for the Deal boatman, which he can hammocks, he can, by ordering the "beat to wear and work in, until in it he recognises quarters," make sure of every man being at his best friend; let the Scotch fisherman his post in seven minutes, ready for action or have ocular demonstration that the "model for any sudden disaster. This sort of discipline boat prosecutes the fishery with equal success, it is which is so much required in the merand far greater safety and comfort in bad chant navy. In case of a ship striking, a dozen weather, and we shall soon have a different men rush to do one thing,-perhaps to release system of things. a boat from one of her davits,—and, conIn the course of each year an average of sequently, swamp the boat, by leaving the something like six hundred ship disasters stern rope untouched. Captain Basil Hall, occur on the shores of this kingdom alone, in his "Fragments of Voyages and Travels," some wrecked through stress of weather; some describes the vigilant precaution daily made by carelessness, and other disgraceful causes; even against the loss of one life. To each Bome through mistaking lights, or having been life-buoy there is as regular a "service" as lured to destruction by useless ones; some to any other part or apparatus of the ship. through actual rottenness of timber ; some He says:

dashed to pieces on the very rock for which "On the top of the mast is fixed a port-fire, they were anxiously looking half a mile calculated to burn, I think, twenty minutes