bewildered me, should be too much for his
powers? What, in short, if the system broke
down for one minute out of the many hundreds
of minutes each man is consecutively employed?
Since the foregoing experience the subject
has fascinated me, and I have created opportunities
for speculating at other railway stations
upon the traffic. I have not yet ascertained
which line's "improvements" have made it exceed
the Hole's for a rapid succession of trains,
but I could point to several which are fully
deserving of "honourable mention," if prizes
were given for the greatest hazard run. My
official friend at Victoria smiled when I said
eight hours at a time seemed a long stretch
for such arduous and absorbing work, and
Waller evidently thought himself well treated
in that particular. The maddening signals,
too, are doubtless simplicity itself when
understood, and it is only their number and
variety which make them seem perilous. The
mechanism is admirable, the adaptation of
means to an end deserving all praise, and
the immunity from accident a point upon
which those responsible have every right to lay
stress. But, let one link in the complex chain
of cause and effect—fail let either the human
or mechanical gear be out of order for an instant,
and it seems certain that the Hole and
kindred places on every line of railway in the
kingdom would immediately become the scene of
a tragedy at which society would stand aghast,
and at which we should all cry as with one voice,
why was not this matter sifted earlier, and the
obvious danger it led up to prevented before?

THE ALMANACH DE GOTHA.

THERE is consternation in the editor's room
at Gotha.

Who has not on his library-table, side by side
with Burke and Dodd, that wonderful production,
the Almanach de Gotha? It is the history of the
genealogy of all the reigning families in-Europe,
the peerage of Germany. In this volume no illustrious
Bug crawls up the tree of a Howard.
Everything is pur sang. Hapsburg and Hohenzollern,
Wittelsbach and Saxon, ay, down to the
reigning Princes of Waldeck Lippe and Detmold
and to the Counts of the Holy Roman Empire,
all are given in the most accurate manner. The
square little volume, with its four portraits of
kings, queens, or statesmen, its excellent index,
its carefully compiled statistics, its historical references,
is a work of no common order. It is
published simultaneously in French and German.

Yet, as we have said, there is consternation
in the editorial room at Gotha. The Almanach
for 1867 was almost ready to be launched forth
into the world, when, lo! like the simoon,
Prussia sweeps over the north of Germany, and
kings and princes are carried away by the blast
like so many reeds; even the stalwart tree of
Austria has lost many of its branches, blown
away by the storm, though the stem still stands
firm on its deep-set roots. The hurricane has
lulled; the treaty of Prague calms for a time
the troubled elements; diplomacy has done its
work! But it is a much easier task to sign a
treaty and exchange ratifications than to re-write
a compendium like the Almanach de Gotha.

"Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?" sang
Arndt, and the editor of the Almanach de Gotha
is at his wits' end to make it out. Is it Prussian
land? Is it Bavarian land? Is it Saxon
land? O nein! O nein! "Das ganze Deutschland
muss es seyn!"

But now comes the dilemma. The whole
German Confederation is extinguished, and
Frankfort, the seat of the Diet, annexed; consequently
the thirty-two states, including the
Hanse Towns, must be struck out of the Almanach,
and the North German Confederation
above the Maine inserted instead. As regards
the embryo Confederation of the Southern
States, all is chaos. Then Austria has lost
Venetia, Denmark has lost the Duchies, and,
worst of all, no one knows whether the few remaining
ninepins will not be bowled down by the
strong arm of a Bismarck or of a Napoleon!

We are careful readers of the Almanach de
Gotha; we venerate its pages; we look upon
its volumes as so many mortuary tablets in memoriam
of departed greatness and disappointed
ambition. Death, as Horace tells us, knocks
equally at the door of the palace of the king
and of the cot of the peasant; but that is the
course of nature. That is not the view we take.
We believe in Nemesis, who strikes during life-
time. What an array of dethroned kings and
princes might be marshalled forth since 1848!
Under the head of Erance, we find in the Almanach
of 1849 the Orleans family struck out and
the Napoleon dynasty in its place. But such
an event is not of a nature to disturb the mind
of the editor of the Almanach de Gotha. It is
easier to shoot a lion with a single bullet than
to exterminate a nest of wasps. Saxony is not
yet annexed, and may remain intact in the
Almanach of 1867; but Hanover, Nassau,
Hesse Cassel, Darmstadt, and others, must all
have a pen struck through them, and be added
to Prussia. Prussia is like the devil-fish
described by Victor Hugo in his Travailleur de la
Mer. It holds in its strangling grip all the
petty princes of Germany. We are in October;
the continental arrangements are by no means
settled, and the Almanach must appear on the
first of January!

We have good reason for saying again, that
consternation prevails in the editor's room at
Gotha.

OUR YACHT.

Our, yacht at this moment lies far out in the
harbour, in a pleasant grove of masts and
rigging formed oy some forty or fifty of her
sisters. The sea is as blue and glistening as
the sea at Genoa, and the harbour stretches out
its two long delicate arms of a pale yellow, to
gather in all her craft tenderly to herself. It is
a fine fresh sea-day, and the whole waste before
us is of a rich blue and silver, and the waters