that it is inclined to reject it altogether. At all events, according to its wont, before acceptance it must strip it of the false. Meanwhile the time for acting on the time is escaping altoge

ther.

It is, however, rather in the region of physical improvement than of politics that this singular idiosyncrasy is most completely developed. Every such scheme is compelled to pass through three several processes, each testing its reality, but all consump tive alike of time and energy. The great project is first the thought of a single man, dimly expressed in conversation, briefly sketched in a still-born pamphlet, casually alluded to in a periodical. It is regarded by his friends as a harmless infatuation, or even watched with interest as evidence of the strange nooks and corners in an otherwise "well regulated" mind. Soon opportunity favouring, or conviction becoming fanaticism, the thinker makes his thought apparent, urges it on the authorities, submits it to the Press, hurls it in the face of a half indignant public. The thought is clothed, and the process of stripping instantly begins. Every ornament is first removed. All that is imaginative, all that has its origin in plilanthropy is ruthlessly torn away. When the project at last stands bare, the attack on its existence is commenced. History and science are ransacked to prove that its execution is impossible. If the scheme is one for crossing the Atlantic, a great luminary of science proves that the coal must be expended, that the machinery must get red hot, that the distance is too great for any reasonable hope of safety. A great Peer pledges himself in Parliament to swallow the boiler of the first steamer which performs the feat. If it is a locomotive which is to run a little quicker than a horse it is proved to a demonstration that the train must be smashed, that the wheels will go on whirring without motion to all enternity that the passengers will be strangled by the atmosphere. A great Review laughs at the absurdity of the man who believes that men can be shot off rocket fashion in safety. If it is a Railway in India, the natives are too impassive to be moved, the white ants will eat the sleepers, the sun will kill all the engine drivers. Sometimes the project contains in itself so small a residuum of truth or practicability that it is abandoned. This has been the case for the present with balloon travelling. The hundred projectors have not yet got the length of even a Joint Stock Association. Sometimes, too, the English mind feels as by an instinct that the time is not yet ripe. The project comes too soon. The world is not ready. It was thus with the grand scheme of William Paterson, the one man of the sevententh century who foresaw the commercial future of the world. His

plan tried three times over, backed by a nation, and favoured by an aristocracy, was still crushed down under the remorseless ignorance of the British public. In all cases the pause at this stage is long, wearing out the souls of the thinkers, cruelly diminishing their chance of witnessing their creations live and move. Presently, however, the plan if it has fact beneath escapes from this stage. Men habituate their minds to its vastness till the difficulties seem to disappear. They hear that it has been accepted by a powerful journal, praised by a political leader, considered by a sober official person. The objections raked up have less and less of plausibility. The vehement lan

guage is transferred from the now confident and therefore quiet speculator to his angry because beaten adversaries. The goal is nearly won. The officials have long since given way. The public at last stands convinced. By a last brilliant stroke, the project is proved to be not only great but profitable. Capitalists step forward, and the new scheme, changed from a thought into a Joint Stock Association, enters its final stage, which terminates only with its final success.

We have deemed these comments no unfitting introduction to the project, the history of which we purpose to narrate. It is the most perfect, as it will be the most splendid instance of the peculiar difficulties we have endeavoured to describe. Devised by a single brain, it has run the gauntlet of ridicule, and steadily progressed towards the realization, we firmly believe to be immediately in prospect. Before, however, we attempt to give a reason for our faith, we must analyse the materials upon which it is based. The scheme has been actively advancing for many years. It has, however, but seldom emerged into public notice. The author, immersed in other cares and believing the time not yet ripe, has contented himself with convincing half the statesmen of Europe. The war, however, has opened a new prospect. The officials have the path clear before them, and the time has at last arrived for bringing the project before the world in all its magnitude. That part of course it is not for us to play. We only desire to recount its history, and to prove to our own readers that the wild scheme is a practical effort, soon to become a realized undertaking. For this purpose we have employed without hesitation all the means placed at our disposal. They consist chiefly of a private diary, containing transcripts of a correspondence, extending over some years with some of the most illustrious statesmen in Europe. For the same reason we are compelled to give some papers almost entire, united only by so much of disquisition as may serve to make their meaning clear to ordinary readers. This course is obvi

ously unavoidable where the opinions to be quoted are weighty, not in themselves, but from the position of those who utter them. It has, too, another advantage. It enables our readers not only to comprehend, but to dissect the scheme. It reveals to them all that secret machinery by which plans so vast must always be achieved, and shews more clearly than any narrative could do, the energy required to obtain that support in limine, which is the primary want of the speculator, and the only necessity of the true discoverer.

The author of the scheme is the Managing Director of the East Indian Railway Company, Mr. R. Macdonald Stephenson. This gentleman, whose biography will one day give to the world a new instance of what may be achieved by energy and purpose, had watched from 1835 the progress of international communication with the East. He had seen the long continued and strenuous effort of the commercial world to accelerate the communication. He had comprehended from the first the magnitude of the trade which must one day be carried by the speediest route. In 1840, the success of the Peninsular and Oriental Company convinced him that the time was ripe for a yet more extended project. His idea was briefly this. He conceived it possible to girdle the world with an iron chain, to connect Europe and Asia from their furthest extremities by one colossal Railway. A portion of this scheme is still too far in the future for us to do more than indicate its vastness. The remainder, all that falls within our scope, was to connect so much of the two continents as should enable a locomotive to travel from Calcutta to London with but two breaks, one at the Straits, and one at the Dardanelles. Even this, however, is sufficiently gigantic. The distance is one on which a locomotive might grow weary. The road lies through separate kingdoms each jealous of yielding the slightest advantage to each other. It crosses pathless deserts, passes regions inhabited only by tribes whose hand has been against every man since Ishmael became a warrior. Even if the physical difficulties are overcome, the political obstacles seem almost insuperable. We admit all this, and admitting, hope to shew that the physical difficulties are overrated, and the political have been smoothed away by Mr. Stephenson himself. The following short table indicates at once the route, the distances, the expenditure, and the net income necessary to insure an interest on the capital expended.

MARCH, 1856.