ent displaying the prodigal
richness of a lord mayor's feast, and the next to behold this scene of
gastronomical fertility laid bare, as the simoom of a hundred voracious
appetites sweeps across the tempting viands, and leaves all blank behind
it, is a theme of exhaustless wonderment. We involuntarily think of the
182,500 Banbury cakes that are here annually consumed by pastry-loving
passengers, and of the 70,080 bottles of stout that are uncorked every
year to quench the thirst of these fleeting customers. We look with a
proper veneration upon every one of the eighty-five pigs here
maintained, and who, after being from their birth most kindly treated
and most luxuriously fed, are annually promoted by seniority, one after
another, into an indefinite number of pork pies, the vacancies caused by
the retirement of these veterans being constantly supplied by the
acquisition of fresh recruits. The returns of the railway company show
that upward of seven millions of passengers are annually draughted
through Wolverton on their way northward. Making a fair deduction for
those who, from lack of means or inclination, do not avail themselves of
the good things here provided, there is yet a startling number of
customers to be supplied. Fancy the three million mouths that, on the
lowest average, annually demand at these tables the satisfaction of
their appetite, craving at one time their accustomed sustenance in one
vast aggregate of hunger. It is like having to undertake the feeding of
the entire population of London. The mouth of Gargantua is but a faint
type of even one day's voracity; and all this is devoured in a spot
which hardly twenty years ago was unmarked upon the map, a mere streak
of pasture-land on the banks of the Grand Junction canal. Surely this is
not one of the least astonishing feats wrought by railway magic.

THE ROBBERS' REVENGE.--FROM THE RECOLLECTIONS OF A POLICE-OFFICER.

Levasseur and his confederates[16] sailed for the penal settlements in
the ill-fated convict-ship, the _Amphytrion_, the total wreck of which
on the coast of France, and consequent drowning of the crew and
prisoners, excited so painful a sensation in England. A feeling of
regret for the untimely fate of Le Breton, whom I regarded rather as a
weak dupe than a purposed rascal, passed over my mind as I read the
announcement in the newspapers; but newer events had almost jostled the
incidents connected with his name from my remembrance,