steps.

On leaving Leighton, within half a mile we enter a covered tunnel, and we
strongly recommend some artist fond of "strong effects" in landscape to
obtain a seat in a coupe forming the last carriage in an express train, if
such are ever put on now, sitting with your back to the engine, with windows
before and on each side, you are whirled out of sight into twilight and
darkness, and again into twilight and light, in a manner most impressive, yet
which cannot be described. Perhaps the effect is even greater in a slow than
in an express train. But as this tunnel is curved the transition would be
more complete.

At Bletchley the church (embowered in a grove of yews, planted perhaps when
Henry VIII. issued his decrees for planting the archer's tree) contains an
altar tomb of Lord Grey of Wilton, A.D. 1412. The station has now become
important as from it diverge the Bedford line to the east, and the lines to
Banbury and Oxford to the west.

A branch connects Bletchley with Bedford 16.25 miles in length, with the
following stations:-

FENNY STRATFORD. LIDLINGTON.
WOBURN SANDS. AMPTHILL.
RIDGMOUNT. BEDFORD.

WOBURN AND BEDFORD.

Woburn is one of those dull places, neat, clean, and pretentious in public
buildings, which are forced under the hot-house influence of a great
political family.

We pass it to visit Woburn Abbey, the residence of the Russell family, with
its extensive and magnificent gardens, its model farms, its picture gallery,
and other accessories of a great nobleman's country seat.

It was at Woburn that Francis, Duke of Bedford, held his sheep-shearing
feasts, and by patronising, in conjunction with Coke of Norfolk and Mr.
Western, improvements and improvers in agriculture and stock-breeding, did so
much to promote agricultural improvement in this county, and to create that
large class of wealthy educated agriculturists, which confers such great
benefits on this country.

Now that every country gentleman has at least one neighbour who is, or
professes to be, an agricultural improver, it is difficult to give an
adequate idea of the benefit we have derived from the agricultural enthusiasm
of the noblemen and gentlemen who first made the science of cultivating
breeding fashionable, we must be excused the word, among a class which had
previously been exclusively devoted to field sports or to town life. They
founded that finest of all modern characters--the English country ge