on a post relative to cattle straying on the
railway.

A railway accident! Ah, poets! how much
of poetry could you find in that, were you so
minded. Odes and ballads, sapphics, alcaics
and dactylics, strophes, chorusses and semi-
chorusses might be sung—rugged poems,
rough as the rocky numbers of Ossian,
soothing poems, "soft pity to infuse," running
"softly sweet in Lydian measure" upon the
woes of railway accidents, the widowhoods
and orphanages that have been made by the
carelessness of a driver, a faulty engine, an
unturned " point," a mistaken signal. Think
of the bride of yesterday, the first child of
our manhood, the last child of our age, think
of the dear friend who has been absent for
years, who has been estranged from us by
those whispering tongues that poison truth,
and is coming swiftly along the iron road to
be reconciled to us at last. Think of these
all torn from us by a sudden, cruel,
unprepared-for death; think of these, falling upon
that miserable battle-field, without glory,
without foes to fight with, yet with fearfuller,
ghastlier hurts, with more carnage and horror
in destruction than you could meet with
even on those gory Chersonean battle-fields
after storms of shot and shell, after the fierce
assaults of the bayonet's steel, and the trampling
of the horses, and the stroke of the sharp
sword. There are bards to wail over the
warrior who falls in the fray, for the horse
and his rider blasted by the scarlet whirlwind.
There are tears and songs for the
dead that the sea engulfs, to cradle them in
its blue depths till Time and Death shall be
no more. There are elegies and epitaphs
and mourning verses for those that sleep in
the churchyard, that have laid their heads
upon a turf, that eat their salad from the
roots, that dwell with worms and entertain
creeping things in the cells and little chambers
of their eyes. There is poetry even for the
murderer on his gibbet; but who cares to
sing the railway victims? who bids the line
restore its dead? who adjurates the engine
to bring back the true and brave? They are
killed, and are buried; the inquest meet; the
jurymen give their verdict, and forget all
about it two days afterwards. Somebody is
tried for manslaughter and acquitted, for, of
course, there is nobody to blame! It is all
over, and the excursion train, crammed with
jovial excursionists, sweethearts, married
couples, clubs of gay fellows, laughing
children, baskets of prog, bottles of beer, and
surreptitious, yet officially connived at, pipes;
the engine dressed in ribbons, the stoker—Oh,
wonder!—in a clean shirt; the excursion
train, I say, rattles gaily over the very place
where, a month since, the accident took place;
over the very spot where the earth drank up
blood, and the rails were violently wrenched
and twisted, and the sleepers were ensanguined,
and death and havoc and desolation
were strewn all around, and the wild flowers
in the embankment were scalded with the
steam from the shattered boiler.

Can you form an idea, poets, of a haunted
line? Suppose the same excursion train I
was speaking of to be on its way home, late
at night, say from Cripplegate-super-mare or
Buffington Wells. Everybody has enjoyed
himself very much—the children are tired,
but happy. The bonnets of the married
ladies have made their proper impression
upon the population of Cripplegate-super-mare,
and they are satisfied with them, their
husbands, and themselves. The married
gentlemen have found out of what the
contents of the black bottles consisted—they
smoke pipes openly now, quite defiant, if not
oblivious, of bye-laws and forty-shilling fines.
Nobody objects to smoking—not even the
asthmatical old gentleman in the respirator
and the red comforter—not even the tall
lady, with the severe countenance and the
green umbrella, who took the mild fair man
in spectacles so sharply to task this morning
about the mild cigar which he was timidly
smoking up the sleeve of his poncho. Even
the guards and officials at the stations do not
object to smoking. One whiskered individual
of the former class, ordinarily the terror of
the humble third-class passenger, whom he,
with fierce contempt, designates as "you, sir,"
and hauls out of the carriage on the slightest
provocation, condescends to be satirical on
the smoke subject; he puts his head in at the
window, and asks the passengers ' how they
like it—mild or full flavoured ?" This is a
joke, and everybody, of course, laughs
immensely, and goes on smoking unmolested.
Bless me! how heartily we can laugh at the
jokes of people we are afraid of, or want to
cringe to for a purpose.

Surely a merrier excursion train as this
was never due at the Babylon Bridge station
at eleven-thirty. Funny stories are told. A
little round man, in a grey coat and a hat
like a sailor's, sings a comic song seven miles
long, for he begins it at one station and ends
it at another seven miles distant. A pretty,
timorous widow is heard softly joining in the
chorus of "tol de rol lol." A bilious man of
melancholy mien, hitherto speechless,
volunteers a humorous recitation, and promises
feats of conjuring after they have passed the
next station. Strangers are invited to drink
out of strange bottles, and drink. Everybody
is willing to take everybody's children on his
knee. People pencil down addresses by the
lamplight, and exchange them with people
opposite, hoping that they shall become better
acquainted. The select clubs of jolly fellows
are very happy—they even say " vrappy."
There is laughing, talking, jesting, courting,
and tittering. None are silent but those who
are asleep. Hurrah for this jovial excursion
train, for the Nor-Nor-West by Eastern Rail-
way Company, its cheap fares, and admirable
management!

Suppose that just at the spot where this