class paintings, including an
altar-piece by Raffaelle, several good Titians, a very fine collection of
Rubens, choice specimens of Vandyke and Sir Joshua Reynolds. After returning
to Bletchley our next halt is at Wolverton station.

WOLVERTON STATION.

Wolverton, the first specimen of a railway town built on a plan to order, is
the central manufacturing and repairing shop for the locomotives north of
Birmingham.

The population entirely consists of men employed in the Company's service, as
mechanics, guards, enginemen, stokers, porters, labourers, their wives and
children, their superintendents, a clergyman, schoolmasters and
schoolmistresses, the ladies engaged on the refreshment establishment, and
the tradesmen attracted to Wolverton by the demand of the population.

This railway colony is well worth the attention of those who devote
themselves to an investigation of the social condition of the labouring
classes.

We have here a body of mechanics of intelligence above average, regularly
employed for ten and a-half hours during five days, and for eight hours
during the sixth day of the week, well paid, well housed, with schools for
their children, a reading-room and mechanics' institution at their disposal,
gardens for their leisure hours, and a church and clergyman exclusively
devoted to them. When work is ended, Wolverton is a pure republic--equality
reigns. There are no rich men or men of station: all are gentlemen. In
theory it is the paradise of Louis Blanc, only that, instead of the State, it
is a Company which pays and employs the army of workmen. It is true, that
during work hours a despotism rules, but it is a mild rule, tempered by
customs and privileges. And what are the results of this colony, in which
there are none idle, none poor, and few uneducated? Why, in many respects
gratifying, in some respects disappointing. The practical reformer will
learn more than one useful lesson from a patient investigation of the social
state of this great village.

[THE WOLVERTON VIADUCT: ill8.jpg]

Those who have not been in the habit of mixing with the superior class of
English skilled mechanics will be agreeably surprised by the intelligence,
information, and educational acquirements of a great number of the workmen
here. They will find men labouring for daily wages capable of taking a
creditable part in political, literary, and scientific discussion; but at the
same time the followers of Geor