for him by the locomotive; that solitudes and
recesses which he would never find after years of plodding in sandal
shoon are silently opened to him by the engineer; and that Timon now,
seeking the profoundest cave in the fissures of the earth, reaches it
in a Pullman car.

The silvery Capitoline dome at Washington floats up from among its
garden trees, seeming to grow higher and higher as we recede from it.
Quickly dominating the low and mean buildings which encumber and try
to hide it in its own neighborhood, it gradually rises superior to the
whole city, growing greater as Washington grows less. The first
part of the course is over the loop of road newly acquired and still
improving by the company--a loop hanging downward from Baltimore, so
as to sweep over Washington, and confer upon the through traveler the
gift of an excursion through the capital. This loop swings southwardly
from Baltimore to a point near Frederick, Washington being set upon it
like a bead in the midst. The older road, like a mathematical chord,
stretches still between the first points, but is occupied with the
carrying of freight. The tourist notices the stout beams of the
bridges, the new look of the sleepers, and the sheen of the double
lines of fresh steel rail: he observes some heavy mason-work at the
Monocacy River. Two hours have passed: at Frederick Junction he
joins a road whose cuttings are grass-grown, whose quarried rocks are
softened with lichen. He is struck by the change, and with reason,
for he is now being carried under the privileges of the first railroad
charter granted in America.

We may not here undertake the story of the iron track, though it is
from this very road that such a story must take its departure, and
though we cannot grant that that story would be exceeded by any in
the range of the author's skill as a matter of popular interest. This
railroad, this "Baltimore and Ohio" artery, connects, through its
origin, with the very beginnings of modern progress, and indeed with
feudalism; for it was opened in 1828 by Charles Carroll, the patriot
who had staked his broad lands of Carrollton in 1776 against the
maintenance of feudalism in this country. "I consider this," said
Carroll, after his slender and aristocratic hand had relinquished the
spade, "among the most important acts of my life--second only to
my signing the Declaration of Independence." Railroads, excepting
coal-mine trams, were as yet untried; Stephenson ha