There is nothing plentiful in the land but ruin! Employment is
scarce--money is scarce--the people are being thinned--farms are being
consolidated--bullock land is progressing--

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where cows accumulate, and men decay."

For some long time there had been a conflict of opinion as to the merits
of different sized gauges for railways. Brunel, the magnificent,
advocated a width of seven feet, and practised it on the Great Western;
others wished for something far more modest. Great was the wrangling
over this "battle of the gauges," and a Royal Commission was appointed to
inquire into the matter. They gave in their Report on 30 May, and the
question was settled by "An Act for regulating the Gauge of Railways" (9
and 10 Vic., c. 57--passed 18 Aug., 1846) by which it was settled that,
in future, all Railway lines in England were to be 4 feet 8.5 in. wide,
and in Ireland, the width was to be 5 ft. 3 in.

By the way, Railway surveyors were paid well, and almost everyone that
had ever dragged a chain posed as a surveyor. As a sample--on 23 Ap. is
reported the case of White _v._ Koe and Maun--where a witness said
"Levellers are always well paid. I have received, before this 10 pounds
a mile, and I could level from seven to eight miles a day. These are not
extraordinary terms. I had to find hands to help me. I had three men at
7s. a day each."

On 22 June poor Haydon, the painter, committed suicide. He was extremely
egotistical, and nothing could persuade him that he was not the best
painter of his time. His fixed idea was that he was without a peer--but
no one else thought so. His diary is very sad reading. Here is an entry
(Ap. 13) relative to the exhibition of his picture, "The Banishment of
Aristides": "Receipts 1 pound 3s. 6d. An advertisement of a finer
description could not have been written to catch the public; but not a
shilling more was added to the receipts. They rush by thousands to see
Tom Thumb. They push--they fight--they scream--they faint--they cry
'Help!' and 'Murder!' They see my bills and caravans, but do not read
them; their eyes are on them, but their sense is gone. It is an
insanity--a _rabies furor_--a dream--of which I would not have believed
Englishmen could have been guilty." He even wrote to the _Times_ about
it: "GENERAL TOM THUMB, last week, received 12,000 people, who paid him
600 pounds; B. R. HAYDON, who has devoted 42 year