bricks, both rich and poor are scattered every
evening about the more immediate suburbs
of the town, where there is free sunshine, and
perhaps a bit of garden, with green fields or
a green park near enough to be reached by
the children of the household. Let the railways
now extend and perfect the work that
the omnibuses have begun. The main work
of London omnibuses is performed in a circle
about ten miles broad, having the Bank for
its centre. Five miles from the Bank, roughly
speaking, is about the length of an omnibus's
tether. Within the circle thus defined
these vehicles establish a daily flux and
reflux of the social tide between domestic life
at the circumference and labour at the centre.
But the population is great and the limit so
defined is narrow. Suburbs become, therefore,
more crowded and costly than they used
to be, and the old country rents of houses in
them have entirely vanished. The poorer
town labourers can ill afford to lodge their
families in any pleasant place outside the
narrow hive in which they toil. Let the
railways understand, therefore, the social
duty which they now have to perform.

Years ago some public writer, boldly
forecasting, compared the charges upon railways
for passenger traffic with the charge for
goods traffic, and declared his belief that a
day might come when it would be found
worth while to carry living parcels, able to
pack and unpack themselves and to look
after themselves, for one tenth of the present
cost. He looked forward to something like
a shilling fare for sixty miles and to the
eventual scattering of the homes of nearly
the whole population over the broad face of
England: this being his solution of the
problem raised by the undue growth of towns.
Towns, he thought, will become what market
places used to be;—places to which men resort
to do their business with each other, and to
which crowds go for the amusement that is
offered. If there be any truth in such a
speculation (and absurd as it may seem in
January eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, I
for one think that our children who live—as
I would they all might—to see January
nineteen hundred and nine, will see things
that we should now account it even more
ridiculous to talk about) the present railway
system, giant as it seems, is only in its
infancy. Besides, is it not a sick infant? It
pines as we see many of our children pine,
partly perhaps because it inherits sickness
from its more immediate parentage, partly no
doubt through bad management, for want of
enough to eat, and for want of healthy exercise.
I own myself perfectly incompetent to bring
up a railway, or to show others how a railway
ought to be brought up. But that there
has been short-sighted and unsuccessful
management is obvious. That whatever is
to be made of the railway system is to be
made rather by suffering its slow and free
growth under wholesome influences, than by
any effort suddenly to cut the oak out of the
acorn, is probable. It is probable, too, that
the next stage of its growth is to be the one
for which I am now hoping.

The omnibus system, in the mechanism of
London life, has done its work. Nothing
remains to be done with that but to perfect
its minuter details, and to make it work with
more regard to public comfort as well as
convenience. With all its clumsiness and its
miseries, the omnibus supplied up to a
certain point so true a want, that it has now
become a household word in every large
English town. It is at least in the power of
the railway manager to walk forward upon
the road thus broadly opened for him. The
success of the excursion trains has shown
how cheap travelling may be made without
forfeit of profits due to the conveying company.
If horsed machines, that drag limited
loads at a slow pace through London,
contrive to carry a passenger five miles from
the Bank for sixpence, a well-managed
scheme of steam machinery can surely carry
the same man twenty miles from the Bank
for sixpence, and can do it, too, in little
more than half the time. At present we ask
only for a fourfold widening of the space
within which the existing tide of life in
London ebbs and flows. For so much relief
there is a pressing need, and a well-planned
system of omnibus-trains in and out of London,
running within twenty miles of town,
at omnibus fares, varying between twopence
and sixpence, fairly accepted, and allowed an
entire freedom of development, would soon
form, I suspect, one of the most profitable
items on the credit side of railway balance-sheets.

This being once done, land on which house-
rent could be cheap would be thrown open
even to the poorer class of labourers in town.
The handicraftsman might escape from his
town-room or his hovel, costly in the direct
item of rent, but far more costly in the items
of sickness, death, and burial. In place of it
he might enjoy the pleasures of a cheaper
cottage in fresh country air, from which he
could take a daily steam run to his work for
no more than the direct saving of expense in
housekeeping. But am I to say nothing of
that which to him is more than all?—The
renewed vigour of his wife; the fresh looks
and helpful hands of children removed
from the vice and filth of crowded courts;
the fresh heart and hope put into himself,
making his day's work of more value.
Health also makes the number of his days'
work many more than they can be when his
whole life is spent under the depressing
influences of town life, as he now lives it.
Health is wealth for his household; it is
hope for the children, whose first steps in
the great world he will live to guide and
have strength to support.

This particular subject has been brought
to mind by a paper read the other evening in