To attend the departure of this train, there arrive not only the republican omnibi and cabs, from the damp night crawler to the rattling Hansom, but carriages, with coronets and mitres emblazoned, guarded by the tallest and most obsequious of footmen, and driven by the fattest and most lordly of coachmen; also the neatest of broughams, adorned internally with pale pink and blue butterfly bonnets; dashing dogcarts, with neat grooms behind, mustached guardsmen driving; and stately cabriolets prance in, under the guidance of fresh primrose-coloured gloves.

But, although the passengers by the Express train are, in every respect, a contrast to those by the Parliamentary, the universal and levelling tendency of the railway system is not less plainly exhibited.

The earl or duke, whose dignity formerly compelled him to post in a coupe and four, at a cost of some five or six shillings a mile, and an immense consumption of horse-flesh, wax-lights, and landladies’ curtsies on the road, now takes his place unnoticed in a first-class carriage next to a gentleman who travels for a great claret and champagne house, and opposite another going down express to report a railway meeting at Birmingham for a morning paper.  If you see a lady carefully and courteously escorted to a carriage marked “engaged,” on a blackboard, it is probably not a countess but the wife of one of the principal officers of the company.  A bishop in a greatcoat creates no sensation; but a tremendous rush of porters and superintendents towards one carriage, announces that a director or well-known engineer is about to take his seat.  In fact, civility to all, gentle and simple, is the rule introduced by the English railway system; every porter with a number on his coat is, for the time, the passenger’s servant.  Special attention is bestowed on those who are personally known, and no one can grumble at that.  Some people, who have never visited the continent, or only visited it for pleasure, travelling at their leisure, make comparisons with the railways of France and Germany, unfavourable to the English system.  Our railways are dearer than the foreign, so is our government,—­we make both ourselves; but compare the military system of the continental railways; the quarter of an hour for admission before the starting of the train, during which, if too early or too late, you are locked out; the weighing of every piece of baggage; the lordly commanding airs of all the officials if any relaxation of rules be required; the insouciance with which the few porters move about, leaving ladies and gentlemen to drag their own luggage;—­compare all this with the rapid manner in which the loads of half-a-dozen cabs, driving up from some other railway at the last moment, are transferred to the departing Express; compare the speed, the universal civility, attention, and honesty, that distinguish our railway travelling, and you cannot fail to come to the conclusion that for a commercial people to whom time is of value, ours is the best article, and if we had not been a lawyer-ridden people we might also have had the cheapest article.