Alps which separates Piedmont from Savoy.
Once let this ridge be tunnelled by a railway,
and the great difficulty will be over; for, there
is tolerably level country to Susa and Turin
on the one hand, and to Chamberry and
France on the other. At present a railway
is under construction, from Turin to Susa; and
a mountain railway of thirty miles would
connect Susa in Piedmont with Modena in
Savoy. This mountain railway will have one
tunnel of three thousand yards, and three or
four others of minor character; but the great
enterprise will be the summit tunnel, eight
miles long, and more than one mile below the
surface of the Alpine ridge at that part. M.
Mans foresees that, excavated in the ordinary
way, such a tunnel would require so large an
amount of time and labour as would frustrate
the whole affair; and he has invented an
excavating machine to quicken his progress.
According to the descriptions which have
reached England, this excavating machine
consists of a frame, in which are set a number
of very broad chisels. The chisels are so
arranged as to cut into the face of the rock, so
as to make five horizontal grooves and two
vertical channels. These grooves and channels
will isolate four blocks of rock, attached only
by their hinder surfaces to the parent rock,
whence they may readily be separated by
hammer-driven wedges. The blocks will
be ponderous masses; for their length will be
seven feet, their breadth three feet, and their
thickness eighteen inches. The machine is
half as broad as the tunnel; it will cut in
one half, while the severed stone is being
removed from the other half by trucks
upon a tramway. The actual working of
the chisels is effected by a series of shocks
caused by the impulse of coiled springs, so that
each chisel works a hole for itself; and a
lateral movement of all the chisels connects
all the chisel holes into a continuous groove or
channel. A water-wheel or steam engine
produces power which draws back the chisels
and compresses the springs; and the power of
the springs then drives the chisels violently
against the rock. This alternation takes
place a hundred and fifty times in a minute.

Chevalier Mans would begin at both ends of
the tunnel, and quarry towards the centre,
each machine doing its own four miles of
work. He can obtain no vertical shafts to
admit air, on account of the vast depth;
but he thinks he can devise a plan for
blowing air into the excavations, sufficient to
ventilate them. He asks for five years of time,
and a million and a half sterling of money.
Whether he will obtain either the one or the
other, the future must show. Our own Robert
Stephenson, when passing through Italy on
his way to Egypt, went to see the excavating
machine experimentally at work, and is said
to have so far approved of it as to recommend
a trial of its efficiency on an extended
scale. The difficulties are great for a
second-rate kingdom to grapple with—
especially under the dark clouds of war
and intestine commotion; but there is this
advantage,—that the portion of the Alps
selected by Chevalier Mans happens to be,
on both its flanks and for many miles distant,
wholly within the dominions of the King  of
Sardinia.

                TREASURES.

       LET me count my treasures,
            All my soul holds dear,
       Given me by dark spirits
            Whom I used to fear.

       Through long days of anguish,
           And sad nights, did Pain
       Forge my shield, Endurance,
           Bright and free from stain!

        Doubt, in misty caverns,
            'Mid dark horrors sought,
        Till my peerless jewel,
            Faith, to me she brought.

        Sorrow (that I wearied
            Should remain so long),
        Wreathed my starry glory,
           The bright Crown of Song!

        Strife, that racked my spirit
            Without hope or rest,
        Left the blooming flower,
             Patience, on my breast.

        Suffering, that I dreaded,
             Ignorant of her charms,
         Laid the fair child, Pity,
             Smiling, in my arms.

         So I count my treasures,
             Stored in days long past;
         And I thank the givers,
             Whom I know at last!

TATTYBOYS RENTS.

IN Tattyboys Rents the sun shines, and
the rain rains, and people are born, live, die,
and are buried and forgotten, much as they
do in Rents of greater renown. And I do not
think that the obscurity of the Tattyboysians,
and the lack of fame of their residence,
causes them much grief, simply because I
believe that they are unconscious of both. That
happy conformation of the human mind which
leads us firmly and complacently to believe
that the whole world is ceaselessly occupied
with our own little tinpot doings—that
serenity of self-importance which lends such a
dignity of carriage to little Mr. Claypipkin,
as he sails down the street in company with
big, burly Mr. Brazenpot—these, I dare say,
set my friends in the locality that gives a
name to this paper, quite at their ease in
regard to the place they occupy, in the estimation
of the universe, and engender a comfortable
certainty that the eyes of Europe (that
celebrated visionary) are continually fixed
upon Tattyboys Rents.

To tell the plain truth about them,
nevertheless, the Rents are alarmingly obscure.