cial aspect of the question apt to impress gloomily the tourist
as he enters the Paddington station and looks around at its blaze of
polychrome and richness of decoration generally. As the coach doors
are slammed upon you, the guard steps into his "van," the vast
drivers, taller than your head plus the regulation stove-pipe, slowly
begin their whirl, and you roll majestically forth through a long
file of liveried servants of the company, drawn up or in action on the
platform, the sensation of patronizing a poverty-stricken corporation
is by no means likely to harass you. You cease to realize that the
Napoleon of engineers, Monsieur Brunel, made a disastrous mistake in
the design of this splendid highway, and that, as some will have it,
it was his Moscow. His error, if one there was, existed only in the
selection of the width of track. Whatever the demerits of the design
in that one particular, the execution is in all above praise. The road
was his pet. Once finished, it was his delight, as with the breeder of
a fine horse, to mount it and try its mettle. Over and again would
he occupy the footboard between London and Bristol, and rejoice as a
strong man in running his race at close to seventy miles an hour. He
and Stephenson were capital types of the Gaul and Briton, striving
side by side on the same field, as it will be good for the world that
they should ever do.

[Illustration: MORTON CHURCH.]

Combats of another character--in fact, of two other characters--recur
to our reflections as we find that we have shuffled off the coil
of bricks and mortar and are rattling across Wormwood Scrubs. More
fortunate than some who have been there before us, we have no call to
alight. Calls to this ancient field of glory, whether symbolized by
the gentlemanly pistol or the plebeian fist, have ceased to be in
vogue. Dueling and boxing are both frowned down effectually, one by
public opinion and the other by the police. It is only of late years
that they finally succumbed to those twin discouragers; but it seems
altogether improbable that the ordeal by combat in either shape
will again come to the surface in a land where tilting-spear and
quarter-staff were of old so rife. In France chivalry still asserts,
in a feeble way, the privilege of winking and holding out its iron,
and refuses to be comforted with a suit for damages.

Southall, a station or two beyond, suggests sport of a less lethal
character, being an ancient meeting-plac