nearest vales, and they have grown up as
labourers. The land and buildings had been
mortgaged beyond their value, and they went
at once into the hands of strangers.

CHIPS
THE LIGHTING OF EASTERN SEAS.

LIKE the remote town of Little Pedlington,
into which street-lamps have not yet been
introduced, and where each traveller, at
night, to save his shins, carries his lanthorn;
a remote sea, even where it forms part of a
great European highway, may have its
stumbling places in the nightly darkness. A
correspondent, practically well acquainted
with the subject, writes:—Your Phantom
Ship cruises in many seas, but in the Red Sea
she has not yet been; had she been there, her
navigators must have noticed want of lights, a
want prevailing in those parts. Lighting the
Red Sea, the Great Basses off Ceylon, and
several stations in the Straits of Malacca and
Singapore, are the points to which I would
draw your serious attention.

It may be calculated that ten thousand
British subjects, including the passengers and
crews of the steamers, pass up and down
the Red Sea annually, embarked in ships of
great tonnage and value. The loss of one of
these argosies would be seriously felt, for it
would involve the destruction not only of a
valuable ship and cargo, but of a very large
number of passengers. Sometimes one
hundred and eighty travel in one vessel; the
average is about ninety in the Peninsular and
Oriental Company's ships, and fifty in ships
that belong to the East India Company. The
correspondence of the month is placed in
jeopardy. What will be the consternation in
England when any steamer, going twelve
knots, shall strike on one of these unlighted
shoals! How rapidly a vessel in such
circumstances would go down, the fate of the
"Orion" and of other ships has taught us.

The Peninsular and Oriental Company have
offered to assist in this matter. Existing
contracts will shortly expire; the speed of the
steamers must be brought to an equality with
that of the Cunard line, and the time has
arrived when it becomes imperative on men
acquainted with the facts to urge upon the
public the necessity of building lighthouses
in many parts where they are now seriously
wanted, as well as of adopting floating lights
wherever floating lights are requisite. Small
shipwrecks excite no attention; must we wait
until the newspapers are fed with a
"Tremendous Catastrophe," before we do our duty
to the men who navigate those distant seas?

THE TAX ON EXCURSION TRAINS.

A CORRESPONDENT has obliged us with a
letter on this subject.

It is stated, he says, in the article on
Excursion Trains, which appeared at page 355 of
your journal, that Government has remitted
the impost on Excursion Trains. This is not
untrue; but should have been stated with
considerable qualification. If a Railway
Company conveys passengers in the most
inferior and inconvenient carriages that run
on rails, or if the fares be less than one penny
per mile, then, and then only, the exemption
is, upon application, usually allowed: but if a
company dare to improve its accommodation,
and to carry the public in the more comfortable
second-class, or in the luxurious first-
class carriages, at equal or even at lower fares
(in many cases within my knowledge at less
than a halfpenny per mile for first, and
considerably lower for second class), your friend
"Red Tape" declares that "no case has been
made out," or "that he is precluded by the
Act of Parliament from making the allowance."
Consequently the company, whether it
gains or loses by the experiment, is mulcted
in the same ratio, upon its cheaply carried
customers, as upon its Express Train
passengers at three-pence per mile; whereas,
did they choose to force them into the inferior
carriages, they are at liberty to exact
higher fares from each, and yet escape the
duty of five per cent.

One company is at this moment
protesting in a court of law against this
astonishing decision; but as I fear the letter
of the Act of Parliament is against them, they
will probably reap nothing but a lawyer's bill.

Where a revenue has to be gathered from
small profits (and if the views you express as
to the probable increase of excursion traffic be
correct—as I think they are— this will be
more the case than ever), the item of a five-
per-cent duty, though apparently insignificant,
becomes of real importance; while its being
levied upon every one of the class of
passengers I have named, renders it more than
a set-off against the omnibus three-halfpence
per mile.

It is Red Tape, then, that ties the wheels
of Cheap Excursion Trains, and not the
directors of railways.

SMILES.

SMILES melt the hate of foemen into love,
   Smiles banish anguish from the sorrow-smitten;
Amongst the millions of the blest above,
   Perennial smiles on every brow are written.

In this our world, where care and grief are rife,
   How sweetly beams the smile of tender kindness;
Without its light how darksome oft were life,
   Through which to grope our weary way in blindness!

Yet some there are who seldom wear a smile,
   Whose hearts are charged with bitterness and malice;
Who, in the thirst of selfishness and guile,
   Drain the foul dregs of envy's poison'd chalice.