ABSTRACT
Now, of course, when we have stigmatized anything as "revolutionary," it is enough. There is nothing left to be said or done. Argument would be irrelevant, and declamation only idle air. Every well-constituted British mind shrinks with moral loathing from "revolution." The French Revolution, which happened a good way off and a long while ago, was bad enough ; but to have a revolution in our midst, though it be only a railway revolution, must, it is implied, involve calamities, not perhaps so conspicuous, but possibly, on that account, all the more dangerous. To reduce our railway fares, to cushion all our carriages, and to ask second and first-class passengers to travel together and behave themselves well-all this may, in the judgment of some, have constituted a revolution ; yet we venture to think that there are other revolutions-economical, social, political, and international, revolutions in every department of business, in every rank of society, and in every relationship of life-which railways have already wrought out, even in England, more mighty and more minute than perhaps have been generally supposed. A t some of these, laying aside our humour, we propose to look. In doing so we will notice, first, the revolution that railways have effected in the comfort and convenience of our locomotion.
