hey aware what a disagreeable association of ideas is
produced in the students of Lempriere's classical dictionary by the two
last names? or the Charon or Atropos? Let these things be mended, and
let them be called by some more inviting appellations--Nelson, St
Vincent, Rodney, Watt, Arkwright, Stephenson, Milton, Shakspeare,
Scott;--but leave heathen mythology and diabolic geography alone. As
night began to close, the sights and sounds grew more strange and awful.
A great flaming eye made its appearance at a distance; the gradual boom
of its approach grew louder and louder, and its look became redder and
redder; and then we watched it roll off into the darkness again, on the
other side of the station, on its way to Bath--till, tearing up at the
rate of forty miles an hour, came another red-eyed monster, breathing
horrible flame, and seeming to burn its way through the sable livery of
the night with the strength and straightness of a red-hot cannon-ball.
And then we called for candles and went to bed.

The train was to pass on its way to Bristol at half-past eleven, so we
had plenty of time to see the lions of Reading--if there had been any
animals of the kind in the neighbourhood--but after a short detour in
the street, and a glimpse into the country, we found ourselves
irresistibly attracted to the railway. The scene here was the same as on
the previous night, and we were more and more confirmed in our opinion,
that, next to the sea or a navigable river, a railway is the pleasantest
object in a rural view. As to the impostors who extort thousands of
pounds from the unhappy shareholders, on the pretext that the line will
be injurious to their estates, they ought at once to be sent to Brixton
for obtaining money under false pretences. It gives a greatly increased
value to their lands, as may be seen by the superior rents they can
obtain for the farms along the line; and as to the picturesqueness of
the landscape, it is only because the eye is not yet accustomed to it,
nor the mind embued with railway associations, that it is not considered
a finer "object" than the level greenery of a park, or the hedgerows of
a cultivated farm. Painters have already begun to see the grandeur of a
tempestuous sea ridden over by steamers; and before the end of the next
war, some black "queller of the ocean flood," with short funnel and
smoke-blackened sails, will be thought as fit a theme for poetry and
romance, as the Victory or the Shan