the edifice surveying it until we were weary,
we returned to our inn, and after taking an excellent supper retired to
rest.

At ten o'clock next morning we left the capital of the meads. With
dragon speed, and dragon noise, fire, smoke, and fury, the train dashed
along its road through beautiful meadows, garnished here and there with
pollard sallows; over pretty streams, whose waters stole along
imperceptibly; by venerable old churches, which I vowed I would take the
first opportunity of visiting: stopping now and then to recruit its
energies at places, whose old Anglo-Saxon names stared me in the eyes
from station boards, as specimens of which, let me only dot down Willy
Thorpe, Ringsted, and Yrthling Boro. Quite forgetting everything Welsh,
I was enthusiastically Saxon the whole way from Medeshamsted to
Blissworth, so thoroughly Saxon was the country, with its rich meads, its
old churches and its names. After leaving Blissworth, a thoroughly Saxon
place by-the-bye, as its name shows, signifying the stronghold or
possession of Bligh or Blee, I became less Saxon; the country was rather
less Saxon, and I caught occasionally the word "by" on a board, the
Danish for a town; which "by" waked in me a considerable portion of
Danish enthusiasm, of which I have plenty, and with reason, having
translated the glorious Kaempe Viser over the desk of my ancient master,
the gentleman solicitor of East Anglia. At length we drew near the great
workshop of England, called by some, Brummagem or Bromwicham, by others
Birmingham, and I fell into a philological reverie, wondering which was
the right name. Before, however, we came to the station, I decided that
both names were right enough, but that Bromwicham was the original name;
signifying the home on the broomie moor, which name it lost in polite
parlance for Birmingham, or the home of the son of Biarmer, when a
certain man of Danish blood, called Biarming, or the son of Biarmer, got
possession of it, whether by force, fraud, or marriage--the latter,
by-the-bye, is by far the best way of getting possession of an
estate--this deponent neither knoweth nor careth. At Birmingham station
I became a modern Englishman, enthusiastically proud of modern England's
science and energy; that station alone is enough to make one proud of
being a modern Englishman. Oh, what an idea does that station, with its
thousand trains dashing off in all directions, or arriving from all
quarters, give of