s. The former has 50 bridges and 5 tunnels,
measuring together 1338 feet in length; the latter has 200 bridges and 7
tunnels, measuring together 11,400 feet, or about 2.25 miles. The former
cost about 720,000 pounds sterling, the latter above 3,000,000 pounds.
Napoleon's grand military road was constructed in six years, at the
public cost of the two great kingdoms of France and Italy; while
Stephenson's railway was formed in about three years, by a company of
private merchants and capitalists out of their own funds, and under their
own superintendence.

It is scarcely necessary that we should give any account in detail of the
North Midland works. The making of one tunnel so much resembles the
making of another,--the building of bridges and viaducts, no matter how
extensive, so much resembles the building of others,--the cutting out of
"dirt," the blasting of rocks, and the wheeling of excavation into
embankments, is so much a matter of mere time and hard work,--that is
quite unnecessary for us to detain the reader by any attempt at their
description. Of course there were the usual difficulties to encounter
and overcome,--but the railway engineer regarded these as mere matters of
course, and would probably have been disappointed if they had not
presented themselves.

On the Midland, as on other lines, water was the great enemy to be fought
against,--water in the Claycross and other tunnels,--water in the boggy
or sandy foundations of bridges,--and water in cuttings and embankments.
As an illustration of the difficulties of bridge building, we may mention
the case of the five-arch bridge over the Derwent, where it took two
years' work, night and day, to get in the foundations of the piers alone.
Another curious illustration of the mischief done by water in cuttings
may be briefly mentioned. At a part of the North Midland Line, near
Ambergate, it was necessary to pass along a hillside in a cutting a few
yards deep. As the cutting proceeded, a seam of shale was cut across,
lying at an inclination of 6 to 1; and shortly after, the water getting
behind the bed of shale, the whole mass of earth along the hill above
began to move down across the line of excavation. The accident
completely upset the estimates of the contractor, who, instead of 50,000
cubic yards, found that he had about 500,000 to remove; the execution of
this part of the railway occupying fifteen months instead of two.

[Picture: Land-slip on N