SCOTCH RAILROADS.
Jr our memory deceives us not, there was only one railroad com- pleted and open to travellers in England in I834—the Liverpool and Manchester ; and only one in Scotland—a seven-miles con- cern, with one or two lazy, lumbering locomotives—the Glasgow and Garnkirk. How England has been intersected and reticulated with railroads during the ten years which have elapsed, and how many more are contemplated or actually in progress, all the world knows; and a "sketch showing the line of the proposed Aberdeen Railway," which has been forwarded to our office, reminds us that even the mountain-masses of the North are having railroads traced around their bases. The transmission of this sketch we take to be equivalent to the presentation of a canvasser's card—" the honour of your vote and support," &c. ; and, after due investigation, we pro- nounce the scheme feasible, and recommend it accordingly.
It is not uninteresting to trace the rise and progress of railroads in Scotland. The short line mentioned above was the first essay ; and though we may appear to have spoken of it lightly, it is de- serving of all honour, since to the intelligence and enterprise of gentlemen connected with it the empire at large is indebted for no small portion of the impetus that has been given to railroads. Taking Glasgow as a centre, railroads are now thrown out on the one side to Edinburgh and Leith on the Frith of Forth, and to Greenock and Ayr on the Frith of Clyde. Glotta and Bodotria were connected by the Romans with a wall intended to check com- munication : in our days, embankments are raised and channels cut along a line nearly parallel with and at no great distance from that stupendous work, to facilitate communication, by means of new and startling rapidity. Almost simultaneously with the good town of St. Mungo, Bonnie Dundee and her stirring neighbours set themselves to intersect their district with railroads—linking together Dundee and Newtyle—Dundee, Arbroath, and Forfar : and near the most remote of Rome's battle-fields, scitheless cars roll, rattling louder than ever the scithed chariots of Galgacus, drawn by steeds lifeless though instinct with motion, which by their puffing and snorting would flabbergast the best of his shel- ties, could they return to earth.
And now the railroad spirit is fairly awakened in Scotland. The capital has been subscribed for a railroad from Dundee to Perth ; and a line projected by Mr. GLADSTONE to branch off from this one about mid-way and stretch through Fife to a terminus on the shore a the Forth opposite Edinburgh—throwing off a branch to the county-town, under the influence of the old saw, "he that will to Cupar maun to Cupar"—is sure to be carried on. Another railroad is intended to branch off from that which connects Edinburgh and Glasgow, intersect the field of Bannockburn, and pass the scarce distinguishable remains of the residence of the old Pictish monarchs in Stratherne, to Perth. Honest Hal o' the Wynd was no contemptible workman in iron in his day ; but he little dreamed what a future generation was to hammer out of the metal which be beat into anything but pruning-hooks or ploughshares. And while Dundee is thus linked to Edinburgh and Glasgow on the South, Aberdeen is bestirring herself, to get tagged on by a railroad 0 the fair company, from the North. A line, with irreproachable radii for its curves and gradients quite workable, will ere long whisk the sentimental traveller from the granite city, past Findon redolent of its own haddocks, and the " policies " of Ury, where a 13aacr.sy may see all mere human walking put to shame, and through Laurencekirk with its snuffboxes, to the vallies of the Tay, the Clyde, and the Forth. And, like the last of the shadowy progeny of Banquo, this youngest of the Scottish railways holds out to us a glass in which we, like Macbeth, though with widely different feelings, see "many more." One is preparing to carry travellers Northward from Aber- deen to Inverurie—the natal soil of Edie Ochiltree's rear-rank man Francie Macraw ; Banff—which the alliterative saws of Scottish schoolboys connect, for no assignable reason, with " bend-leather "; Elgin—with its cathedral dreadless of future Wolves of Badenoch; Forres—respecting the distance of which the weary and foot-sore Banquo (for want of a railroad) so anxiously inquired; and Inver- ness—where CROMWELL'S soldiers are recorded to have introduced for the first time the arts of making shoes and speaking a civilized and intelligible language. From Edinburgh, again, a railroad is projected to skirt the shores of the Forth and German Ocean, Southward to Newcastle—whither, in defiance of the proverb, it may carry the coals of Lothian: and from Glasgow another is to round the base of Tintock, on the pinnacle of which, as the old song declares, the ugliest of maidens, "gin she hae the name o' siller," may be placed assured that "the win' will blew a' men till her"—within hail of the huge natural hollow, called, in the old days of the reivers, the Marquis's or the Devil's Beef-tub, and past the hymeneal village of Gretna to Carlisle. These South- ern termini, Newcastle and Carlisle, being joined by a railway running parallel to the more Southern of the Roman Walls, as the railroad connecting Forth and Clyde does with the Northern, the curious traveller may ere long have himself whirled in " no time " round the skirts of what Scotsmen term "the South Hielands " ; and, starting from Glasgow, he may half embrace by his railroad route the huge mass of the Grampians, completing the circle by water from Inverness to Greenock. One projected line between Carlisle and Glasgow, if executed, would carry him well into the heart of "the South Hielands"; and the "men of pleasant Teviot- dale, fast by the river Tweed," may ere long see a railroad ap- proaching the classic precincts of Kennaquhair : but the North Highlands, Ben Nevis, Ben Macduie, and other " big Bens "- far uglier customers than the hero whom the name recalls to the London Fancy—will long repel the approaches of rails and loco- motives.
There is sense and spirit in all this. Better invest money in developing the resources of one's own country, than in the Stocks of the ephemeral Revolutionary Governments of Europe or the Re- pudiators across the Atlantic : and, reverting to the Aberdeen Railway—" with that our song began, with that shall end "—we are sorely deceived in the proverbially sharp natives of that region, if they are not "far enough North" to be aware of this truth.
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