O CHRONICLE the origin and development of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, as a chapter in the history of civilization in the north of England, is the purport of the following pages. For amongst the numerous benefits common in the middle of this wonderful nineteenth century, though totally unknown at its commencement, Railways are not the least important; and amongst the many aids in gradually bringing about that perfect civilization which the peoples of no age or clime have yet attained to, but which will assuredly bless the world in "The Good Time Coming," Railways seem to me to be indispensable: I have, therefore, chosen to trace the rise and progress of the First Public Railroad; to shew how, from comparatively small beginnings, great results have been achieved, by patient perseverance and well-directed skill; how a short line, (the mere successful rival of a once projected, but never completed, canal) at first intended for little more than supplying two, then comparatively

unimportant, towns with coal, has been gradually extended, by the clear-sighted and energetic men of the north, until it may be said to reach from the German Ocean to the Irish Sea;-opening out alike the coal fields and limestone of Durham, the ironstone of Cleveland, and almost every variety of building materials, farm produce, and mineral and textile manu• factures, in its varied route; making its passengers familiar with landscapes of exquisite beauty or romantic grandeur; and affording the inhabitants of previouslyseparated districts facilities for regular social intercourse; so that (as PAINE said of the influence of letters on nations) "losing by degrees the awkwardness of strangers, and the moroseness of suspicion, they learn to know and to understand each other." I shall shew how a few almost unknown individuals, opposed most strenuously by the very men whom this dreaded Railway and its branches was materially to benefit, surmounted every obstacle thrown in their path, until wealth and honours were deservedly reaped by them, instead of the losses and contempt which were prophesied as their portion.

No one can view with greater horror the desecration of the fine rustic scenery of our dear old England, than he whose hand has penned these pages. I pity, from my inmost soul, that man or woman who possesses no healthy love for our heather-clad hills, our rural dales, and our pleasant plains, studded with comfortable farmsteads and cosy cottages, with "green fields to the very back door;" I have sickened at the sight of oncepleasant watercourses, where the clear rivulet erst whimpled, and the troutlet disported, now polluted with the stinking refuse of printworks, dyehouses, and factories, and the waste of towns; and I have sighed for the time when our great "hives of industry" shall possess a smokeless atmosphere, and turn their sewerage to profitable account: but, I must confess, I like to see the steam ascending from a railway train, as the swift locomotive glides onward, past village and grange; and I think our great poet, Wordsworth, was never much farther from the mark than when he wrote that well-known Sonnet denouncing the introduction of a

Railway into the Lake districts. I rather agree with CAMILLA TOULMIN, who sings of the Railway Whistle:

"The Whistle! I love it-its shrill note-hark!

Hath a music unto my soul

Richer and sweeter than throstle or lark

For matin could ever troll.

Each day doth it teach me, by some dream,
For I hear it a score of times,

If I choose to watch for the feathery Steam,
Or list to Its gladdening chimes.

Hish-sh-there's a Train! which hath come with
& speed

To rival the carrier dove,

Mocking the limbs of the racing steed,

On its mission of peace and love.

It bringeth glad words from-some sick friend,
And they are so newly writ,

Ye forget the terrors that time might send,
For the ink is pallid yet!

A lover hath journey'd a hundred miles,
And it's nothing at all to do,

For a kiss, perhaps, and a few sweet smiles,
A meeting, a parting, a fond adieu.
He hath stolen the end of a toiling day,
But is back ere the morning beams,
With his wealth of memories dear to lay
On the shrine of his waking dreams!

Knowledge hath travell'd-(the People's I mean)
Pack'd up in huge paper bales,
To work out a marvel, more great, I ween,

Than the wonders of fairy tales.

For the wizard deeds of former years

But small admiration claim,

And a Wizard Servant here appears
That putteth them all to shame!

He knoweth to work by the Press and the Boat,
By the Loom, and the Iron Road;

And I love the Whistle's shrieking note

As a messenger from God,

Better than lark or throstle's song,

As telling more than they,

In its own distinct, suggestive tongue,

Of the dawn of a Better Day!"

When I sit upon some lofty mountain brow, and see the mighty train winding, like a huge fiery serpent,

through the valley below, I love to look back in a revery on the various modes of travelling that from time to time have prevailed in the land of my fathers. "In my mind's eye, Horatio," I can see the ancient Brigantes, (many of whose grave-hills I have assisted to open for antiquarian researches,) not wholly without some rude roads, as it is too much the fashion to represent them, but learning much from their indomitable conquerors, the Romans,-who were not mere oppressors, but in some measure the civilizers of all lands where they planted the standard of "the eternal city." Between the making of the Roman Roads in Britain, and the laying down of the First Passenger Railway, how tardy was the progress of the means of transit! When I think on it, I take fresh hopes for the cause of Progress, and feel certain that the amelioration of human suffering will gradually come.

Those numerous writers who represent the brave Ancient Britons as being totally without roads of any kind, are evidently in error. The cannibals who, according to recent researches in ancient sepulchres by industrious antiquaries like the Rev. William Greenwell, of Durham, appear, at some remote period, to have inhabited our country, previous to what has been hitherto regarded as the Aborigines, and who had, in the course of nature, been forced to give place to a superior race called Celts, themselves doomed to give place to a still superior race, may possibly have been in that deplorable condition. But a people who understood so well how to fortify their fords, that the strong stakes they had driven into the bed of the Thames remained for many centuries; and whose enduring earthworks still shew how every mountain top in Britain had been chosen as their "coigne of vantage;" whose courage in war struck the veteran Roman legions with surprise, and whose skill in riding their small hardy horses and dexterity in driving their scythe-armed chariots would be now viewed with admiration in any circus in Europe; whose careful casting of many metal articles, of both use and ornament, as well as the construction of their vehicles, shew considerable mechanical ability and artistic skill; whose

knowledge of agriculture extended to the cultivation and garnering of corn, and to the use of marl as a manure; and whose Bardo-Druidical system of religion, if we may form any notion of it by the Historical Triads of the Cymry, (the numbers three and seven being apparently, from remotest ages, dear to Superstition,) was a higher and a holier thing than much that yet passes current among men as sacred;—that such a people, I say, should have possessed no rude roads even, to enable them to pass with ease through their interminable forests, is no article of my historical creed, and I can only express my surprise that it should form any portion of the belief of so many other authors.

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JULIUS CÆSAR, in the commencement of the eighth chapter of the fifth book of his Commentaries, tells us, (I quote COL. MARTIN BLANDEN's translation,) that Cassivellaunus, having lost all hopes of success by a battle, disbanded the greatest part of his forces, and retaining only about four thousand chariots, observed our motions from time to time, keeping himself at some distance in the woods, or such places where the Romans could have no access; from those countries to which he knew we were to march he carried off the cattle and natives before-hand; and whenever our cavalry ventured a little too far to lay the fields waste, being well acquainted with all the roads and by-ways, he would detach a party of his chariots out of the woods to attack us; nor could our horse engage them without great danger, which prevented our making such excursions as we would have done otherwise, and obliged Cæsar not to permit his horse to go further to burn and destroy, than the legions were able to attend them." A pretty clear proof that the Ancient Britons had roads and by-ways. Though one does not expect them to have been equal to the famous Appian Way, constructed from Rome to Capua by Appius Claudius Pulcher, and afterwards completed to Brundusium by another consul of the same family; yet some of the British trackways (if worthy of no better name) were sufficiently direct to serve as sites or foundations for Roman roads, as the Foss-road and Ikenild-street. "If,"