Christmas table, and there to be discussed for half-an-bour-let us hope, with some relish."

One remark of his, en passant, we notice, as it may guide the geologist to whom, in some remote age of futurity, will fall the task of elucidating Egyptian strata from the occurring debris,

"We don't know the luxury of thirst in English climes. Sedentary men in cities, at least, have seldom ascertained it; but, when they travel, our countrymen guard against it well. The road between Cairo and Suez is jonché with soda-water corks. Tom Thumb and his brothers might track their way across the desert by those land-marks."

To the artist world of London the most interesting of his Egyptian rencontres will, probably, be his abocca. mento with a well-known brother craftsman, an aquarellist of distinguished genius, whose strange fancy it is to lie perdu in the unintellectual wilderness of Cairo. Here he appears to have found out the grand arcanum of human happiness, leading the dreamy, lazy, hazy, tobaccofied life of the languid lotus-eater. In not unattractive colours does his London visitor depicture the dwelling-place of the self-exiled anchorite; there is a sort of fascination at work on him under the roof-tree of this gifted recluse; he is almost persuaded to remain. The public, who by this time justly look on him as their property, little knew what risk they ran. He sat for his portrait to this mysterious hermit: it will be found at a charming page of the book; it will be valued by numerous admirers of the artist, as well as of the subject; prized with all the jealous care of Othello for the kerchief he got of an Egyptian woman.

We were about closing the volume with a general expression of admiration and approval of its varied beauties, and of that wondrous versatility (true test of genius) with which the author leads us through the mazy paths of philosophy, pleasantry, and pathos, equally entertaining in all, when the following patriotic reflections caught our eye concerning "Cleopatra's needle," the property of the British public, and which the unaccountable nonchalance

of government allows to remain in a most unseemly state. Who is to blame here ? Is it the Board of Trade, or the Woods and Forests? We pause for a reply.

"Then we went to see the famous obelisk presented to the British government by Mehemet Ali, who have not shewn a particular alacrity to accept this ponderous present. The huge shaft lies on the ground prostrate, and desecrated by all sorts of abominations. Children were sprawling about, attracted by the dirt there. Arabs, negroes, and donkeyboys, were passing, quite indifferent, by the fallen monster of a stone,-as indifferent as the British government, who don't care for recording the glorious termination of their Egyptian campaign of 1801. If our country takes the compliment so coolly, surely it would be disloyal upon our parts to be so enthusiastic. I wish they would offer the Trafalgar Square Pillar to the Egyptians; and that both of the huge, ugly monsters were lying in the dirt there, side by side."

England appears, from her apparent bewilderment about the matter, to be in the position of the elderly lady who won an elephant in a lottery.

Ten years ago there was spread a rumour that some wealthy touristLord Prudhoe or Col. Vyse-had ordered the shipment of this monument at his private expense, with a view to its erection at the bottom of Regent Street. The invoice was said to be in town. The shareholders of Waterloo Bridge were on the alert, and a meeting was called to petition Lord Melbourne that it might be placed on the centre arch of that hitherto unprofitable structure. was soon ascertained, however, that the project was premature; the whole affair having originated (we were present) in a hoax of Charles Philipps on the late Tom Hill, who went, hot fool, with the story to Dr. Black of the Chronicle. The paragraph, however, duly "went the rounds

It

not

only of our provincial but of the continental press. As, at that period, we happened to be in frequent communication with J. P. Béranger, with whom Fraser's Magazine has ever since been a favourite, we were both surprised and flattered to receive from him some complimentary verses thereupon, which our modesty engaged us to suppress at the time, but

and will do much good in affording employment to the people, and introducing a knowledge of skilled labour into the country. And, perhaps, in this land of anomalies, railways, the last result of civilisation in a small country, may lead back the Irish to the use and enjoyment of some of its earlier and easier means and blessings,*-if, indeed, the Irish should not think fit to follow the advice of the blustering organ of Young Ireland, in tearing up the rails to make pikes, and destroying tunnels and bridges, in the attempt to massacre the Saxon soldiery. Ay, and the Highlands of Scotland will have their railways; in short, every region and every district will have its railway. Early copies of a magnificent map, in four large sheets, is now spread on the carpet before me: it is a "Railway Map of England, Wales, and Scotland, drawn from the Triangulation of the Ordnance Survey, the Survey of the Railway Companies, and other information; shewing the Lines of Railways, with their Stations, and Sections of Railways, the Inland Navigation, Great and Cross Roads, Cities, Markettowns, and Villages. By James Wyld, Geographer to the Queen and Prince Albert, Charing Cross East, London." This is the title of a noble piece of work. As I look down upon it, one is amazed to see what ample provision there already is in the United Kingdom for intercourse and intercommunication. I turn to a smaller map, on which the projected lines are laid down, as well as those actually made, or in progress, and I find the reticulated system thereon laid down as contemplated for Great Britain, startling at once in its mag

nitude and its minuteness. And, then, if the propulsion of carriages on railways upon any atmospheric principle (I say any, because I understand no less than ten new patents have been lately granted) should be found to answer practically and commercially, the most mountainous regions will be scaled, and forced into communication with the existing groups of railways. But, vast as this prospect of iron roads is, a still more extensive vision opens before the eyes of a writer in the last number of the Westminster Review. His notion is, that the change now in progress is that of superseding stone roads by iron roads. He says,—

"The first road was a track; the second one made with rough and hard materials, sometimes paved, and more frequently thrown loose upon the ground; the third a macadamised road; and the number of private bills applied for between 1829 and 1833 for roads of this construction was 340. There are 27,000 miles of turnpike roads in Great Britain alone; and the public roads of all kinds, including both cross roads and turnpike roads, in Great Britain and Ireland, extend to a length of somewhere about 150,000 miles! We have now to convert these stone roads, or the greater part of them, into iron roads, as speedily as may be practicable, and possibly (as the disposition to travel increases with facilities of travel) find room for twice the number. This is the work Englishmen have set themselves to do, and in this generation or the next they will do it."

Indeed they will not, my fine fellow, either in this generation, or the next generation, or any generation yet to come. Here is a specimen of the wild fancies that in this season of

railway frenzy haunt the brains of even clever and intelligent men! Why, it is as monstrous as a sick man's dream,-the ægroti somnium ranum. Stone roads, high and bye, nerer will be superseded so long as there are stones to be found upon the earth. You will have no main trunk stone roads, it is true, no roads serving the purposes of arteries in the system of circulation by which travellers throughout the United Kingdom are conveyed; but roads from the humble pathway to the admirably constructed highway: ay, and canals, too, you always will, always must, have. Again and again be it enforced, that the question of the mere conveyance of goods and passengers from place to place is purely a financial question; and when only short, or comparatively short, distances have to be performed, such as may be got over in an hour or two, or a few hours, or half a day, or a whole night, the cheapest mode of conveyance for the vast multitude of the people always will be the best, and that which they will never fail to adopt. Now, it is utterly and absolutely impossible that railroads ever can, by any device or ingenuity of man, compete in cheapness of conveyance with rivers, or highroads, or even with canals. I recollect, that when the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway-bill passed, the liveliest apprehensions were entertained that the Forth and Clyde and Union Canals would be ruined. But what was the result? The speed of the fly-boats was increased, and the fares diminished; and the traffic, instead of dwindling away, has become greater than it was before the railway was constructed. And here, be it remembered, the distance traversed between the two termini will not fairly come under the denomination of a short distance; it took the mail coach upwards of four hours and a half to accomplish it. We must recollect, too, that if the canal be unaffected in its passenger-traffic, much more must it necessarily remain uninjured in the traffic in goods, and especially heavy goods. The favourite adage of the Americans-that which as a moral sentence is inscribed on the dials of their clocks, and inculcated as the earliest and most important lesson upon the

minds of their children-is, "Time is money." But this, though true, is not a truth of universal application. Hundreds in our own country -the fruges consumere natos-the lily-like gentlemen, "who toil not, neither do they spin," so far from converting time into money, spend largely in their efforts to kill the old enemy. When, however, the individual has remunerative occupation for the whole of his time not devoted to sleep, nourishment, exercise, and whatever else may be essentially necessary for the health of body and mind, then is time money in one sense of the word, because it may be figuratively said to be convertible into money. But then it is money of every denomination of value, and the worth of this time decreases directly as the distance for the traversing of which it is to be expended. During the parliamentary session, Mr. Austin's time, taking the whole of the twenty-four hours, is probably worth two guineas an hour, and to him very speedy transit, when he may desire it, is very valuable; but the Irish peasant, for whom you are providing steamroads, earns sixpence, eight pence, tenpence, and, at the utmost, one shilling a-day. Take the highest figure, and then the value of his time will be one halfpenny an hour. Say he works twelve hours. Allow him seven hours for sleep, and two for taking his meals and smoking his pipe,-his dhudeen, or brulegeule. He has three to spare. Now is it not clear that he cannot afford to pay and ought not to pay one farthing for being rapidly conveyed over any distance which he can accomplish in three hours on a cart, or horse, or on foot, or in any way so it be without cost, or, at all events, with no greater cost than the three-halfpence which represent the value of his three hours, and constitute one-eighth of his revenue for the day, that surplus which, after the necessaries of the day are provided for, the soldier has to spend out of his pay, but which Paddy is not in a condition to afford to lay out for any thing save an absolute want, as his military friend may, who is housed and clad at the public expense ? Would it not be not alone foolish but sinful for him to pay his threehalfpence a-mile, half, or his penny