at every thing, from a common sewer to a
coal mine, an omnibus company to a hundred leagues of railway. With
geniuses of this stamp have originated some of the impracticable
projects so eagerly caught at by English capitalists, whose unemployed
cash had mounted, as Mr. Ford expresses it, from their pockets to their
heads. We know not who was the projector of that most magnificent scheme
to connect Madrid with the Atlantic, in defiance of such trifling
impediments as the Guadarama range and the Asturian Alps, but we learn
from the "Gatherings" that he was "to receive L40,000 for the cession of
his plan to the company, and actually did receive L25,000, which,
considering the difficulties, natural and otherwise, must be considered
an inadequate remuneration." Unfortunately, when he sold his plan, he
did not show the buyers how to surmount the difficulties; and indeed he
would have been puzzled to do so, since they subsequently proved
insurmountable. But the whole of the facts relating to Spanish railroads
lie in a nutshell, and may be set forth in ten lines. Neither by the
nature of its surface, nor by amount of population and importance of
trade, is Spain adapted to receive this greatest invention of the
present century. As to a regular system of railways, diverging from
Madrid to the frontiers and principal seaport towns, on the plan laid
down for France, it is not to be thought of, and can never be
accomplished. And with respect to those lines which _might_ be made
along the valleys, and by following the course of rivers, the country is
not yet ripe for them. Spain has not yet been able to get canals; her
highroads, worthy of the name, are few and far between, leading only
from the capital to coast or frontier, whilst cross roads and
communications between towns are for the most part mere _caminos de
herradura_, horse-shoe or bridle roads of a wretched description. A few
short lines of cheap construction over level tracts, and favoured by
peculiar circumstances, such as a populous district, the proximity of
large towns, or of a country unusually rich in natural productions, are
the only railways that can as yet be undertaken in Spain without
certainty of heavy loss. The line between Madrid and Aranjuez is the
only one, Mr. Ford thinks, at all likely to be at present carried out.

We have been greatly delighted with the pictures scattered through Mr.
Ford's book, pictures that owe nothing to pencil or graver, half pages