Our Iron Bocds, by Frederick S. Williams (Bemrose and Sons),
is the title of a brief popular history of the rise and progress of rail- ways in this and other countries, for which there has been found so wide a demand, that it has reached the honours of a second edition. It is evidently the result of much well-directed research, and is put together in a careful and scholarly manner, so that it is very read- able, though here and there it bristles with statistical information. The illustrations are much to the point, and strike as as very fairly done. The paper and printing are first-rate. Ma Williams gives us some good anecdotes, especially on the subject of the birth of our Railway system. Here is one,—" You must be making handsomely out of your canals," was once remarked by a friend to the celebrated Duke of Bridgewater. "Oh l yes," replied his Grace ; "they will last my time. But I don't like the look of these tramroads ; there is mischief in them." "The observation of the Duke," justly remarks Mr. Williams, "was in a sense prophetic, for those wooden roads to which he referred were the foreshadowing of the railway system of the present day." We commend to the notice of the antiquarian reader Mr. Williams's account (pp. 5-7) of tramways in use at Cole- brooke Dale, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, &c., in the days before Outram was born.
Previous page
