sly in the flames
before the eyes of a throng of impotent lookers-on. Some fifty-two or
fifty-three persons were supposed to have lost their lives in this
disaster, and more than forty others were injured; the exact number of
the killed, however, could never be ascertained, as the telescoping of
the carriages on top of the two locomotives had made of the destroyed
portion of the train a visible holocaust of the most hideous description.
Not only did whole families perish together--in one case no less than
eleven members of the same family sharing a common fate--but the remains
of such as were destroyed could neither be identified nor separated. In
one case a female foot was alone recognisable, while in others the bodies
were calcined and fused into an undistinguishable mass. The Academy of
Sciences appointed a committee to inquire whether Admiral D'Urville, a
distinguished French navigator, was among the victims. His body was
thought to be found, but it was so terribly mutilated that it could be
recognized only by a sculptor, who chanced some time before to have taken
a phrenological cast of his skull. His wife and only son had perished
with him.

"It is not easy now to conceive the excitement and dismay which this
catastrophe caused throughout France. The new invention was at once
associated in the minds of an excitable people with novel forms of
imminent death. France had at best been laggard enough in its adoption
of the new appliance, and now it seemed for a time as if the Versailles
disaster was to operate as a barrier in the way of all further railroad
development. Persons availed themselves of the steam roads already
constructed as rarely as possible, and then in fear and trembling, while
steps were taken to substitute horse for steam power on other roads then
in process of construction."

AN AMATEUR SIGNALMAN.

Mr. Williams in his book, _Our Iron Roads_, gives an account of a foolish
act of signalling to stop a train; he says:--"An Irishman, who appears to
have been in some measure acquainted with the science of signalling, was
on one occasion walking along the Great Western line without permission,
when he thought he might reduce his information to practical use.
Accordingly, on seeing an express train approach, he ran a short distance
up the side of the cutting, and began to wave a handkerchief very
energetically, which he had secured to a stick, as a signal to stop. The
warning was not to