tell us concerning the land of Egypt
before any long time has elapsed.

Asia will have a spider-line of railway by and by, when the slow-coach
proceedings of the East India Company have given something like form
to the Bombay and Bengal projects; but at present the progress is
miserably slow; and _Bradshaw_ need not lay aside a page for the rich
Orient for many years to come.

There are a few general considerations respecting the present aspect
of the railway system, interesting not only in themselves, but as
giving a foretaste of what is to come. In the autumn of last year, a
careful statistician calculated that the railways of Europe and
America, as then in operation, extended in the aggregate to 25,350
miles, the total cost of which was four hundred and fifty millions of
pounds. Of this, the United Kingdom had 7000 miles, costing
L.250,000,000. According to the view here given, the 7000 miles of our
own railways have been constructed at an expense prodigiously greater
than the remaining 18,350 miles in other parts of the world. It needs
no figures to prove that this is the fact. Many of the continental and
American railways are single lines, and so far they have been got up
at a comparatively small cost. But the substantial difference of
expense lies in our plan of leaving railway undertakings to private
parties--rival speculators and jobbers, whose aim has too frequently
been plunder. And how enormous has been that plunder let enriched
engineers and lawyers--let impoverished victims--declare. Shame on the
British legislature, to have tolerated and legalised the railway
villainies of the last ten years; in comparison with which the
enforcements of continental despotisms are angelic innocence!

Besides being got up in a simple and satisfactory manner, under
government decrees and state responsibility, the continental railways
are evidently more under control than those of the United Kingdom. The
speed of trains is regulated to a moderate and safe degree; on all
hands there seems to be a superior class of officials in charge; and
as the lines have been made at a small cost, the fares paid by
travellers are for the most part very much lower than in this country.
Government interference abroad is, therefore, not altogether a wrong.
Annoying as it may sometimes be, and bad as it avowedly is in
principle, there is in it the spirit of protection against private
oppression. And perhaps the English may by and by discover