coke oven, or the flickering light of the station
in the middle of the night, carefully
oiling the joints of his engine, he is the
model of an honest, conscientious workman,
dutiful, orderly, and regular. May his shadow
never grow less, and his engine never grow
rusty!

The increased force of the wind and freshness
of the air denote an approach to the
sea-coast, and in a few minutes we are before
the coke ovens of Folkestone, which remind
one more of South Staffordshire than of Kent.
A run through the glowing tunnels, and
round the cliffs, carries us safely into Dover,
where we part company with the Esquimaux
German Baron, and where the French banker
is given up unconditionally and shudderingly
to his natural enemy the hateful sea. I wish
Tom Jones and his mate good-night, and I
sink for a few hours into numerical insignificance
as Number Two hundred and four, or
something equally high, at the Lord Warden
Hotel, trying in vain to sleep, with the roaring
wind, the hissing steam, and the clattering
engine ringing in my ears.

Punctually at eight next morning, I again
take up my position by the side of Tom
Jones, on the engine of the London express.
The morning is fine and clear for November,
the sea is breaking quietly over the sand and
stones upon the beach, and the sea-gulls are
flapping their long wings, and circling round
the funnel of our engine, which does not look
so like a stage-coach driver of the old school
as it did in the night-mist. The round
shoulders stand revealed in the morning
light, as the brass, beehive-shaped manhole;
the broad-brimmed hat is nothing more
than the overhanging scroll top of the engine
chimney. We start out of the station, along
the coast-curve, at a fair speed, and rush
towards what appears at first sight to be two
upright letter-box slips, cut at the base of the
high, steep cliff, but which develope, as we
draw nearer, into two, narrow, pointed
arches, like the entrance to some old monastery,
or cathedral. They are surely too
narrow to admit the round, broad shoulders,
and the low-crowned hat, and yet we are
rushing towards them, reckless of
consequences! Tom Jones did not appear
unsteady last night, but now he increases the
steam when he ought— or at least I think he
ought— to apply the brakes, and John Jones
seems equally careless. I see before me the
prospect of being jammed up in the centre of
a chalk-cliff, and dug out at the end of a few
centuries, a petrified mass, like those hares
which the newspapers tell us the woodman
sometimes finds imbedded in the brave old
oak, or the toad which the geologist discovers
in one of the formations. It is useless for
the cold mathematical fiction-crusher to cry
"Fudge," and say that I knew very well we
were making for an ordinary tunnel,
traversed by some sixty trains a day. Let him
put himself in my position, on the tender of
an engine, going at the rate of forty miles an
hour, towards what appears to be a common
rat-hole, at the foot of a hill, with certain
strings issuing from its mouth, and he will
find even his sluggish imagination stimulated.
Destruction or safety, there is small time for
reflection. In an instant we are at the
portals of the cliff, which widen at our
approach, and I involuntarily shrink as we
plunge through them into the thick, black
darkness.

The roar increases, and the hissing is as if
our way lay through Pandemonium, and
over the prostrate bodies of a thousand
serpent fiends. There is not a glimmering
of light now, it being day, except when the
white steamy smoke is beaten down upon us
from the roof. I, who look out a-head, can
at last discern a very small open church-
door, and through it I can see the faint grey-
blue outlines of the country. The doorway
appears to be rapidly advancing towards us,
increasing in size, and the country becomes
more distinct, looking like a bit of valley
scenery, seen from some large old cathedral
aisle. I have scarcely time to admire the
setting of the picture formed by the sharp,
well-defined outline of the arch, when, with a
whistle, we find ourselves out of the tunnel
amongst the sea-gulls and the hills. I now
enter into the excitement of the whirlwind
coach, which dashes with me on the tops of high
level mountains, passes over iron bridges
that answer the never-ceasing rushing noise,
with a responsive roar, rushes down again
into a deep valley with the sandy hills almost
closing overhead; past groups of white-
shirted labourers, looking like a flock of
sheep; past pastures, in which the quiet,
grazing cattle, grown wise in their generation,
allow us to rush by without displaying
either fear or wonder.

We now make for another cliff at increased
speed, guiding our course towards a small,
round, black, target mark at the base, about
the size of a penny piece. As we draw
nearer, it assumes the proportions and
appearance of the entrance to a gas-pipe.
Although I admit that our success was very
great in going through the cathedral aisle,
still I cannot help thinking that the round
shoulders are rather too venturesome in
trying the passage of such a circumscribed
tunnel. But the railway architect delights
in a close shave. He sends us round curves,
and under bridges within a foot of the top
and sides— perhaps a yard, but, as I look at
it from my point of view, it seems about an
inch. He sends us past walls, past stations,
past houses, in the same spirit of economising
space; and although, by a strong effort of the
mind, we arrive at the conclusion that it is
all mathematically correct, still it is very
difficult to convince the unreasoning senses of
the fact, especially from the outside of an
express engine. We near the mouth of the
tunnel, which opens like the jaws of a whale