ut experience has
proved those fears, like many others, to have been groundless, and a
very thorough analysis of the atmosphere of the line in all
circumstances, and by the most competent men of the day, has
demonstrated that the air of the Metropolitan railway is not injurious
to health. The excellent general health of the employes also affords
additional and conclusive testimony to this fact even although it is
unquestionably true that there is at times a somewhat sulphurous smell
there.

This thorough ventilation, of course, could only have been achieved by
ingenious arrangements and a peculiar construction of the engines,
whereby the waste steam and fumes of the furnaces should be prevented
from emitting their foul and sulphurous odours. The carriages are
brilliantly lighted with gas, contained in long india-rubber bags on
their roofs, and the motion of the trains is much gentler than that of
ordinary railways, although they travel at the rate of from fifteen to
twenty miles an hour, including stoppages,--a rate, be it observed,
which could not have been ventured on at all but for the thorough and
effective system of telegraphic and semaphore signalling employed, to
indicate from station to station the exact state of the line--as to
trains--at all times. On the whole the Metropolitan Railway has proved
one of the most useful and successful undertakings of modern times. See
Note 3 at the end of the chapter.

In reference to foreign railways, we have only space to say that there
are works as grand, and as worthy of note, as any of which we can boast;
and it is with much regret that we feel constrained to do no more than
point to such magnificent undertakings as the _Mont Cenis_ Railway,
which ascends and tunnels through the Alps; and that stupendous line,
the Union Pacific Railroad, 3000 miles in length, formed by the daring
and enterprising Americans, by means of which the prairies and the Rocky
Mountains are made of no account and New York is brought within seven
days of San Francisco! The engineering works on the Sommering Railway,
between Vienna and Trieste; the mighty Victoria Tubular Bridge at
Montreal; the railway bridge over Niagara; the difficulties encountered
and overcome in India; the bold achievements of railway engineers amid
the dizzy heights and solitudes of the Andes--all these subjects must be
passed over in silence, else our readers will, we fear, come to the
conclusion that we have lost comm