RAILROADS.

No invention has ever effected such a wonderful revolution in human affairs as that of the Railroad. Time and distance are annihilated. We no longer travel, but fly, to our journey's end. Travelling, indeed, in its old signification, is no longer known. Packed snugly in the old stage-coach, we found a merry circle, enjoying, to the highest degree, the excitement of their novel position. Sallies of wit and merriment, jokes, old and new, filled up the time between the stopping places. We had ample leisure and opportunity to view and enjoy the country as we passed through it, and which we came to see. We could look out upon the hills and the valleys, the rivers and the lakes, as we jogged slowly by them, and have time to drink in the charms of Nature that lay about us. The tavern where we stopped at night was the scene of new enjoyment; the perils and mishaps of the day were recounted; we had time to look round the village, and take a peep at its inhabitants, refresh ourselves with a good supper,

and return to rest with the pleasant anticipation of new delights and new adventures on the morrow.

This was travelling; and such it was when a journey to Niagara Falls occupied about two weeks. Instead of being transported at once to that sublime and awful scene, we had a fortnight to enjoy the anticipation of it, as well as the various episodes and adventures of the journey. We enjoyed the country and ourselves as we went along, and the grand sight that burst upon us at the end of it, all the more from its having been discussed, imagined, and in our fancy compared with the grand and beautiful scenery we had passed through. All this is gone by. One day brings us breathless and covered with dust to Saratoga, and two to Niagara. We may have caught a glance of a lake or a mountain, but before we can take a second look they are gone and lost to our sight. We no longer travel, but start at one place and alight in another. No time is allowed us to stop and breathe awhile. Steam waits for no man. The cars are ready, the whistle blows, and off we go again, the last morsel of a hasty lunch sticking in our throats, and our cup of coffee left behind for want of time to drink it.

What we have lost in the poetry of travelling has been made up to us in many ways. The facilities of intercourse bring us near to our distant friends, and a day only separates us instead of weeks. If sickness

comes, we are at their side in an instant. The telegraph brings us news from them in a few minutes, and in an hour we join them. We hardly realize what changes in our social condition are wrought by the telegraph and railroad,-changes in our modes of thought, of feeling, and of action. These modifications are gradual and imperceptible, but they are moulding us into something very different from what we were of old. Society is no longer what it was. Distant cities have become neighbors; a few minutes bring us intelligence of them, and we are separated from them only by a few hours. New neighbors, new associations, new ideas, and new habits, come from the discovery of Morse and of Fulton, the importance of which, on the character and destiny of the race, it has hardly entered into our imaginations to conceive. We correspond by lightning, and ride, as it were, upon the wings of the wind. The results of this mighty revolution we no more dream of than did the Puritans, who landed at Plymouth, of the empire they were founding.

The results of these great discoveries, which are most obvious and most clearly comprehended, are those which relate to the circulation and development of natural wealth. Its effect upon our social condition we can but feebly realize; but the impetus given to trade, in all its branches, we can see and feel, however inadequate may be our conceptions of

future growth, however unable we may be to predict the accelerated ratio of accumulation and progress. The Western farmer has now a market for his corn, which before was hardly worth gathering and stowing in his barn. The great West springs up like Minerva, all armed, from the head of Jupiter; the great Valley of the Mississippi, capable of supporting its hundreds of millions, is brought into immediate contact with the Atlantic seaports. The emigrant is whirled to the land flowing with milk and honey, in the twinkling of an eye, and the product of his first year's labor is sold in Boston or New York, which it reaches in a day or two from the farm.

What may we not expect from such wonderful results? The railroad has carried the world forward centuries at a bound. The life of man, in his experience of change and improvement, is lengthened from threescore and ten to three or four hundred. Are we alive to the fact of this wonderful extension of human life? Through the telegraph, steamboat and railroad, we live five years in one. In five years we witness results that our grandfathers could not hope to see in twenty or in fifty. Is not the span of life, which is but a daily experience, most wonderfully lengthened out in our favored day? The sensations and emotions of three hundred years are comprehended within the limit of fourscore. We live, then, three hundred, instead of eighty years.

Such are the results of steam, and such are some of its compensations for the awful and sudden destruction of hundreds, whom it sometimes sends unwarned and unprepared into a common grave among shattered cars, or beneath the waves of the Atlantic or the St. Lawrence.

A new country, like our own, just springing into life,—its virgin soil teeming with wealth, which waits only for the hand of labor and the means of transportation; its mountains filled with iron, copper and gold,—must derive the most direct and immediate benefit from railroads. The old and more exhausted nations of Europe are fully alive, however, to the magic effects of steam. England is covered with a network of iron roads, and France is following hard upon the same track. Russia is connecting her widespread territory with iron bands, thus concentrating and making available her immense military establishment, as well as developing her great agricultural resources. Italy, even, has her railroads, and the steam whistle sounds the herald trumpet of a new era amidst the ruins of ancient Rome.

The railroad goes everywhere-over mountains and through mountains, across lake and river, and even through the air, mocking the everlasting Falls of Niagara with the triumph of invention and of genius. We may congratulate ourselves that we have lived in such a wonderful period of the world's