of a very different
kind. I was admitted through the iron gate by the same policeman; the
"down" express train arrived, and it conveyed me in an hour and a half
to Liverpool, a distance of about forty-five miles, stopping only once
at the well-known town of Warrington.

[From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.]

STEAM-BRIDGE OF THE ATLANTIC

In the summer of 1838 the Atlantic Ocean was crossed for the first time
by vessels exclusively propelled by steam-power. These pioneers were the
_Sirius_ and the _Great Western_--the former built for another class of
voyages, and afterward lost on the station between Cork and London; the
latter built expressly for Atlantic navigation, and which has ever since
been more or less employed in traversing that ocean. Other ships
followed: the _British Queen_, afterward sold to the Belgian government;
the _Great Liverpool_, subsequently altered and placed on the line
between Southampton and Alexandria; and the _President_, lost, no man
knows how or where, in the year 1841. Then came what is called "Cunard's
Line," consisting of a number of majestic steam-ships built in the
Clyde, to carry passengers and mails between Liverpool in Europe, and
Halifax, Boston, and New York in America; a service they have performed
with the most marvelous regularity. The only great misfortune that has
befallen this line has been the loss of one of the vessels, the
_Columbia_, which, in nautical phrase, "broke her back" on some rocks on
the American shore of the Atlantic. Then came the _Great Britain_, the
greatest of them all, differing from the others in two respects--first,
in being built of iron instead of wood; and second, in being propelled
by the Archimedean screw instead of by the old paddle-wheels; and, alas!
she has differed from them all in a third respect, inasmuch as neither
the same good-luck attended her as in general fell to the lot of the
ships of the Cunard Line, nor the same irretrievable bad fortune as was
met by the _President_ and the _Columbia_; for, after having made
several voyages very successfully, she, to the amazement of all mankind,
very quietly went ashore in Dundrum Bay, on the east coast of Ireland,
from whence, after spending a most uncomfortable winter, she was brought
back to Liverpool, and now lies in the Bramley-Moore Dock there, like a
huge mass of iron suffering under premature rust. But all this time
these ocean steamers that periodically brought to New York passe