tone coeval with the creation. If a lake stands in
the way, he will undertake to drain it, with immense advantage to the
neighbouring proprietors. If a valley intervenes, he will bridge it with
a viaduct, which shall put to shame the grandest relics of antiquity. He
has no knowledge of such bugbears as steep gradients or dangerous
curves; a little hocus-pocus with the compasses transforms all these
into gentle undulations, and sweeps of the most graceful description. He
will run you his rails right through the heart of the most populous
city,--yea, even Glasgow herself,--and across the streets, without the
slightest interruption to the traffic. He will contrive so, that the
hissing of the locomotive shall be as graceful a sound as the plashing
of a fountain in the midst of our bisected squares; and he is indignant
at the supposition that any human being can be besotted enough to prefer
the prospect of a budding garden, to a clean double pair of rails
beneath his bedroom window, with a jolly train steaming it along at the
rate of some fifty miles per hour.

The opposing engineer has a contrary story to tell. He has the utmost
confidence in the general ability of his scientific friend, but on this
occasion he has the misfortune to differ in opinion. Very carefully has
he gone over the whole of the line surveyed. He is sorry to say that the
gradients are utterly impossible, and the curves approaching to a
circle. Tunnelling is out of the question. How are two miles of
quicksand and two of basaltic rock to be gone through? The first is
deeper than the Serbonian bog, and would swallow up the whole British
army. The second could not be pierced in a shorter time than Pharaoh
took to construct the pyramids of Egypt. He considers a railway in the
heart of a town to be an absolute and intolerable nuisance; and, on the
whole, looking at the plan before him, he has come to the conclusion,
that a more dangerous and impracticable line was never yet laid before a
committee of the United Parliament of Great Britain.

So much for the engineering Hector and Achilles. Out of these two
opinions, of necessity, must the five respectable members on the bench
form their judgment; for of themselves they know nothing, having been
purposely selected on account of their superior ignorance.
Cross-examination makes the matter still worse. A cantankerous waspish
counsel, with the voice of an exasperated cockatoo, endeavours to make
the opposing engi