Nothing
can be more complete. It is an air-line road, and so perfect that the
traveller finds few places where the rails do not meet, before and
behind him, in the horizon. The track is double, the rails very heavy
and admirably ballasted; station-houses and engine-houses are splendid
in build, perfect in arrangement, and surrounded by neat gardens. The
whole work is worthy of the Pyramid builders. The traveller is whirled
by culverts, abutments, and walls of dressed granite, through cuttings
where the earth on either side is carefully paved or turfed to the
summit. Ranges of Greek columns are reared as crossings in the midst of
broad marshes, lions' heads in bronzed iron stare out upon vast wastes
where never rose even the smoke from a serf's kennel.
All this seems good; and a ride of four hundred miles through such
glories rarely fails to set the traveller at chanting the praises of the
Emperor who conceived them. But when the traveller notes that complete
isolation of the work from all conditions necessary to its success, his
praises grow fainter.
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