allegro train now is, there occured the great
accident of last July. You remember, the
excursion train, through some error, the
cause of which was unfortunately never
discovered, ran into the luggage train; the
driver and stoker of the former were dashed
to pieces—thirty-three persons were killed or
wounded. Suppose some man of poetical
temperament, of fantastic imagination, of
moody fancies were in the carriage of this
merry train to-night, looking from the window,
communing with the yellow moonlight, the
light clouds placidly floating along the sea
of heaven as if sure of a safe anchorage
at last. He knows the line, he knows the
place where that grim accident was—he
muses on it—yes; this was the spot, there
laid the bodies.

Heavens and earth! suppose the line were
haunted! See, from a siding comes slowly,
noiselessly along the rails the PHANTOM TRAIN!
There is no rattle of wheels, no puffing and
blowing of the engine, only, from time to
time, the engine whistle is heard in a fitful,
murmuring, wailing gust of sound; the lamps
in front burn blue, sickly lambent flames
leap from the funnel and the furnace door.
The carriages are lamplit too, but with corpse
candles. The carriages themselves are mere
skeletons—they are all shattered, dislocated,
ruined, yet, by some deadly principle of
cohesion, they keep together, and through the
interstices of their cracking ribs and framework
you may see the passengers. Horrible
sight to see! Some have limbs bound up in
splinters, some lie on stretchers, but they have
all faces and eyes; and the eyes and the faces;
together with the phantom guard with his
lantern, from which long rays of ghastly light
proceed; together with the phantom driver,
with his jaw bound up; the phantom stoker,
who stokes with a mattock and spade, and
feeds the fire as though he were making a
grave; the phantom commercial travellers
wrapped in shrouds for railway rugs; the pair
of lovers in the first-class coupé, locked in the
same embrace of death in which they were
found after the accident, the stout old gentleman
with his head in his lap, the legs of the
man the rest of whose body was never
found, but who still has a face and eyes,
the skeletons of horses in the horseboxes,
the stacks of coffins in the luggage-vans (for
all is transparent, and you can see the fatal
verge of the embankment beyond, through
the train). All these sights of horror flit
continually past, up and down, backwards
and forwards, haunting the line where the
accident was.

But, ah me! these are, perhaps, but silly
fancies after all. Respectability may be
right, and there may be no more poetry in a
railway than in my boots. Yet I should like
to find poetry in everything, even in boots.
I am afraid railways are ugly, dull, prosaic,
straight; yet the line of beauty, honest
Hogarth tells us, is a curve, and curves you
may occasionally find on the straightest of
railways—and where beauty is, poetry, you
may be sure of it, is not far off. I am not
quite sure but you may find it in ugliness
too, if there be anything beautiful in your
own mind.

WHAT MY LANDLORD BELIEVED.

MY Bohemian landlord in Vienna told me
a story of an English nobleman. It may
be worth relating, as showing what my landlord,
quite in good faith and earnest believed.

You know, Lieber Herr, said Vater Böhm,
there is nothing in the whole Kaiserstadt
so astonishing to strangers as our
signboards. Those beautiful paintings that you
see—Am Graben and Hohe Markt, real works
of art, with which the sign-boards of other
countries are no more to be compared, than
your hum-drum English music is to the
delicious waltzes of Lanner, or the magic
polkas of Strauss. Imagine an Englishman,
who knows nothing of painting, finding
himself all at once in front of one of those
charming compositions; pictures that they
would make a gallery of in London, but which
we can afford to put out of doors; he is
fixed, he is dumb with astonishment and
delight—he goes mad. Well, Lieber Herr,
this is exactly what happened to one of your
English nobility. Milor arrived in Vienna;
and as he had made a wager that he would
see every notability in the city and its
environs in the course of three days, which
was all the time he could spare, he hired a
fiaker at the Tabor-Linie, and drove as fast
as the police would let him from church to
theatre; from museum to wine-cellar; till
chance and the fiaker brought him into the
Graben. Milor got out to stretch himself,
and to see the wonderful shops, and after a
few turns came suddenly upon the house at
the sign of the Joan of Arc.

"Goddam! " exclaimed Milor, as his eye
met the sign-board.

There he stood, this English nobleman, in
his drab coat with pearl buttons, his red
neckcloth, blue pantaloons and white hat,
transfixed for at least five minutes. Then
swearing some hard oaths, a thing the
English always do when they are particularly
pleased, Milor exclaimed, " It is exquisite!
Holy Lord Mayor, it is unbelievable!"

Mein Lieber, you have seen that painting
of course, I mean Joan of Arc, life-size, clad
in steel, sword in hand, and with a wonderful
serenity expressed in her countenance, as she
leads her flagging troops once more to the
attack upon the walls. It has all the softness
of a Coreggio, and the vigour of a Rubens.
Milor gave three bounds, and was in the
middle of the shop in a moment.

"That picture!" he exclaimed.

"What picture,—Eurer Gnaden?"
enquired the shopkeeper, bowing in the most
elegant manner.