non.

Knowledge, which we are every where told is now advancing at railway
speed, is still confined within very narrow limits, we are sorry to say,
among railway clerks and other officials. They still seem to measure the
sphere of their studies by distance, and not by time; for instance, not
one of the _employes_ at Reading could give us more information about
Bristol than if it had been three days' journey removed from him. Three
hours conveys us from one to the other--and yet they did not know the
name or situation of a single inn, nor where the boats to Chepstow
sailed from, nor whether there were any boats to Chepstow at all. In
ancient times such ignorance might be excusable, when the towns were
really as distant as London and York now are; but when three hours is
the utmost limit, and every half hour the communication is kept up
between them, it struck us as something unaccountable that Bristol
should be such a complete _terra incognita_ to at least a dozen
smart-looking individuals, who stamp off the tickets, and chuck the
money into a drawer, with an easy negligence very gratifying to the
beholder. Remembering the recommendation of the Royal Western Hotel
given us by a friend, with the whispered information that the turtle was
inimitable, and only three-and-sixpence a basin; we stowed away the
greater portion of the party in a first-class carriage, and betook
ourselves in economical seclusion to a vehicle of the second rank. And a
first-rate vehicle it was--better in the absence of stuffing on that
warm day, than its more aristocratic companion; and in less than three
minutes we were all spinning down the road--a line of human and other
baggage, at least a quarter of a mile in length.

At Swindon we were allowed ten minutes for refreshment. The great
lunching-room is a very splendid apartment--and hungry passengers rushed
in at both doors, and in a moment clustered round the counters, and were
busy in the demolition of pies and sandwiches. Under a noble arch the
counters are placed; the attendants occupying a space between them, so
that one set attend to the gormandizers who enter by one of the doors,
and the rest on the others. It has exactly the effect of a majestic
mirror--and so completely was this my impression, that it was with the
utmost difficulty I persuaded myself that the crowd on the other side of
the arch was not the reflection of the company upon this. Exactly
opposite the place where I stood--in