1849.]

ber, 1839, the Camilla, and on the 16th
November the Sunbeam, went on one part of
their journey on the Grand Junction Rail-
way at the rate of 684 miles! The greatest
railway speed, however, that has yet been
accomplished was displayed by the Courier
in traveling from Didcot to Paddington, on
the 26th August, 1848, with the twelve
o'clock express train from Exeter. This en-
gine is one of the eight wheel class, with
eight feet driving wheels, a cylinder of
eighteen inches, and a stroke of twenty-four
feet. From a state of rest at Didcot, to
the time when the train entered the station
at Paddington, only 49' 13" elapsed; that
is, at the average rate of sixty-seven miles an
hour, including the time lost in getting up
speed when leaving Didcot, and in reducing
speed when approaching Paddington. Ex-
clusive, however, of these losses, exactly in
traveling from the forty-seventh mile-post,
which the train passed at 3h. 46' 40" to
the fourth mile-post, which it reached at
4h. 23' 26", forty-three miles were perform-
ed in thirty-six minules and forty seconds, or
an average speed accomplished of upward
of seventy miles per hour. While the train is
thus almost on the wing, beating the eagle
in its flight, the passengers are reclining in
their easy chairs, thinking or sleeping, read-
ing or writing, as if they were in their own
happy homes-safer, indeed, than there, for
thieves cannot rob them by day, nor bur-
glars alarm them by night. The steam-horse
starts neither at the roar of the thunder-
storm, nor the flash of its fire. Draughts
of a purer air expel the marsh poison from
its seat before it has begun its work of
death; and surrounded by conductors, the
delicate and timid traveler looks without
dismay on the forked messengers of destruc-
tion, twisting the spire, or rending the oak,
or raging above the fear-stricken dwellings

of man.

five feet had accumulated in the deep cutting through the Cowran Hill upon the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway. On the morning of that day, the Hercules engine, built in that year by R. Stephenson and Co., approached the cutting, where crowds of the people had assembled to assist in the emergency. When it reached the spot, it dashed right into the drift, clearing its way throu h the obstructing mass, and driving the snow over the top of the engine chimney, like foam from the surf of a violently agitated sea, In spite of this and similar obstructions, the train came down from Greenhead, twenty miles, in an hour and a quarter, and kept its time, while all the ordinary roads were either greatly obstructed, or entirely blocked up.

Although in wet weather the wheels of the locomotive sometimes slip upon the rails, and thus retard slightly the progress of the train, yet the delay is speedily compensated, and we may safely assert, that in all states of the weather, and in all seasons, railway traveling is equally safe and equally comfortable and expeditious. Serious and well-founded doubts were at one time entertained respecting the performance of locomotives, when such a quantity of snow lay on the rails as interrupted all the ordinary communications throughout the country; but these fears were dispelled so early as the 20th of December, 1836, when snow to the depth of four or

It is not to be wondered at that persons of a nervous temperament, and incapable of estimating the small and calculable amount of danger to which they are exposed on railways, should have their fears strengthened by the sight of a train of enormous length, weighing sometimes 153,300 lbs. avoirdupois, rushing at the rate of 56 miles an hour, along embankments and viaducts, and on the edge of precipices with the ocean raging at their base; and that they should absolutely prefer the stage-coach or the steam-boat, with all their discomforts and real dangers, of a first-class carrepose to the luxury and riage; and still less is it to be wondered at, when they read the details of a railway accident,-or of locomotives taking to their heels and running through brick walls, like a musket ball through a paper target,-or of a collision with a luggage train, where the wagons overrode each other till the uppermost one was found piled forty feet above the rails! We admit the tendency of this knowledge to create alarm, and we sympathize with the sensitive nature which it misleads; but while we would call to the remembrance of such persons some of the frightful disasters on the ocean, in which hundreds have perished in a moment; the deadly explosion of high-pressure boilers, by which crowds of passengers have been destroyed, on board the American steamers; or the constant occurrence of stage-coach and carriage accidents, when travelers were not numerouswe are anxious to prove to them that there is and can be no traveling with anything like the safety of railway conveyance. No account of the present Railway system can be correct, or even honest, without some notice of the nature and character of railway accidents; and we scruple the less to refer to

some of the most frightful, because it is ne-
cessary
that measures be taken, at whatever
cost, to prevent their recurrence, and because
we think it very probable that, if these means
are taken, we may never hear again of such
disasters. When we speak of railway acci-
dents, we refer only to those which happen
to passengers without any negligence on their
part, and in consequence only of their trav-
eling on a railway.

In a former Article we had occasion to
mention the increasing safety of steam nav-
igation as exhibited in the voyages of steam-
ers connected with the State of New York.
England, 1 passenger out of
France, 1
Belgium, 1
Germany, 1

...

England, 1 official out of

In the five years ending with 1824, one life
was lost out of every 126,211 passengers;
in the same period ending with 1833, one
life was lost in every 151,931 passengers;
and in the same period ending with 1838,
only one life was lost out of 1,985,787, the
safety of the passengers having increased
16 times.* The same result has been
obtained in railway traveling. According to
the calculations of Baron von Reden, the fol-
lowing were the casualties which took place
on the railways of England, France, Belgium,
and Germany, between the 1st of August,
1840, and July, 1845:-

869,000 passengers, killed by his own negligence.
2,157,000 do.
do.

670,000 do.

25,000,000 do.

do.

do.

300,000 officials, killed and wounded from misconduct.

France, 1

...

Belgium, 1

Germany, 1

do.

do.

do.

do.

do.
do.

852,000 killed from defective management.

3,465,996 do.

1,690,764 do. 12,254,858 do.

The safety of railway traveling in Germany, as shown in the above table, is very remarkable, and to us inexplicable; nor is the great loss of life on English railways less unaccountable, for it is 4 times greater than in France, 2 times greater than in Belgium, for passengers, and nearly 15 times greater than in Germany. If these results are correct, they inspire us at least with the hope, that all nations may now rival the Germans in the safety with which they conduct their

railway operations. That railway traveling in England is approaching rapidly to that in Germany, in respect to the safety of travelers, we shall be able to show from documents that cannot be questioned. We have now before us the returns to Parliament of all the accidents which have taken place on the railways of Great Britain and Ireland for the years 1847 and 1848, and from them we obtain the following important results:—

IN 1847.

19 passengers killed, and 87 injured, from causes beyond their control.

9 passengers killed, and 128 injured, from causes beyond their own control.

1849.]

If we now take the number of passengers | details; but we may say in general, that killed from causes beyond their own control, we shall obtain the following results:

1847,

1848,

Passengers killed.

19

or 1 out of 2,887,053 passengers. 9 or 1 out of 6,428,348 passengers.

Hence the risk of being killed was nearly 2 times less in 1848 than in 1847, and nearly 8 times less than it was in the years 1846 and 1845, according to Baron von Reden's calculations. The comparatively great loss of life to passengers in 1847, was occasioned by the accident at Wolverton, on the 5th of November, when seven passengers were killed by the passenger trains running into a siding, and coming into collision with a coal train, in consequence of the negligence of the policeman; and also to the death of three passengers on the 24th of May, by the fall of part of the Railway bridge over the river Dee, when part of the train was precipitated into the water. Such disasters will, in all probability, never again occur. They have, at least, not occurred in 1848 and 1849; and we can therefore say to our timid and oversensitive friends who refuse to travel on railways, that in the year 1848, only one passenger was killed out of six and a half million of passengers who traveled by Railway; and that no safer traveling than this is to be found, or can be conceived.

But while the above returns place beyond a doubt the comparative safety of passengers, they present a fearful picture of the casualties sustained by the servants of the Company and by the public. Four hundred and thirteen deaths, and three hundred and ninety-three cases of injury, in the space of two years, affecting, it may be, ultimately, the life or happiness of the surviving sufferers, cannot be viewed without alarm, and call loudly upon the Government and the Companies to inquire into and remove the causes by which they have been occasioned. Circumstances have led us to look at this subject with some care and anxiety. The causes which led to these disasters have been honestly inquired into by the Railway Commissioners, and are clearly set forth in their Reports; but they have not yet been viewed in their generality, and therefore no determined plan has been adopted for preventing their future operation. The evils to be remedied, are obviously such as admit of a remedy; and we are surprised that science and ingenuity and legislation have not been more earnestly required to provide a cure.

Our limits will not permit us to enter into

Railway accidents may be arranged in two
groups, namely, those which occur from im-
perfect mechanism, concealed from observa-
tion, and those which arise from careless-
ness, and from causes which either are or
may be visible, and, if seen, may be prevent-
ed. If the iron girder of a bridge snaps,-
if its masonry gives way,-if the tire of a
wheel is thrown off,-if the bar of a rail
springs,-if an axle breaks, and a boiler
bursts, all these accidents are the result of
imperfect mechanism. We believe that the
strength of the axle and the girder, that the
swelling of the boiler, had never been suffi-
ciently tested, and that the tire of the wheel
had never been sufficiently secured; and we
hold that in all these cases the mechanist
and the engineer should be held liable for
the accidents which are thus occasioned, in
the same manner as a lawyer and a medical
man are liable for the consequences, the one
of a mismanagement of his client's business,
and the other of the ignorant practice of his
art. At all events, axles and girders should
be made doubly strong, and tires doubly
secured, and boilers doubly riveted, before
they are placed in contact with human life.
The experience which we are daily acquiring
of the strength of materials, and of its modi-
fication by time and pressure and vibratory
action, will, we are persuaded, gradually
diminish the number of accidents arising
from imperfect mechanism.

It is therefore against the other class of
accidents, those that produce collision, or
deviation from the rails, that we require to be
These collisions may arise from
guarded.
the trains moving in opposite or in the same
direction, and from a train meeting one at
rest at the station, or, as in the Wolverton
accident, from the points being opened so as
to conduct the train into a siding occupied by
another train, or by carriages. In all these
cases, the accident arises from the hostile
trains not seeing each other, and not being
able to stop when they do see each other.
When deviations from the line of rails are
occasioned by physical obstructions, by sleep-
ing drunkards, or cattle, or trespassers, a
piece of rock, or slips of earth, the accident
arises from the obstructions not being seen
at all, or not in time to allow the train to be
stopped. In many of these cases, the col-
lisions have taken place at stations where
they are approached in a curve line, so that
the engineer or the guard cannot possibly
see the obstruction, and therefore cannot stop
the train. The cure for this class of acci-

HYMN.

BY LORD BROUGHAM.

From the Athenæum.

KOSSUTH.

SEE PLATE.

Louis Kossuth and the Recent History of Hungary-[Ludwig Kossuth, &c.] Edited by ARTHUR FREY. Vol. I. Mannheim, Grohe; London, Williams & Norgate.

actions with which its influence has been identified. In the absence of a better authority, however, we must try to glean from Herr Frey's compilation such particulars of his hero as seem like matter of fact, or may be gathered from words or writings of Kossuth himself, quoted in these pages; while in those details or summaries which belong to the general history of the Hungarian cause, an attempt must be made to interpret the vehement language of the narrative,-by the aid of such documents as appear, and of whatever external aids can be procured at the moment, so as to present some outline of the contest between the Magyars and their opponents, divested of the ultra coloring used in the present narrative.

Ar a time when every eye is eagerly turn- | ment of its powers, or to detail the transed in the direction of Hungary, and when the accounts from the Danube and the Theiss, however varying and contradictory, leave no doubt of the heroism with which a struggle for national independence, second to few that history has loved to record, has been maintained in that region, against the combined powers of two great empires,at such a moment, we say, whatever promises us a nearer view of any of the actors in this exciting scene must be eagerly welcomed. The name of Kossuth, which has been borne over all Europe as chosen Defender" of the Magyar cause, is a passport for any work professing to tell us something of a man so greatly and suddenly distinguished; and the volume now before us will be taken up with avidity, on the strength of its title alone. We cannot say that the expectations with which we opened the book have been satisfied, nor that its perusal has given us much pleasure. The ostensible editor, who has compiled it with the assistance of "Hungarian and Austrian writers," speaks in a tone little calculated to induce a temperate reader to place much confidence in his statements of fact, still less in the truth of the colors in which they are set forth. The spirit of the work is more than republican; it breathes the hottest aspirations of a party-but lately supreme in the place from whence the book was issued that worship "revolution" as something like a divine process; regarding it as an end of itself,-not as a means deplorable even when necessary to those objects which are precious enough to be well purchased at this terrible price. One of this temper, it is clear, is not the painter whom even liberal judges would choose to delineate any eminent character raised to command by political commotions, to explain the develop

VOL. XVIII. NO. IV.

The volume does not bring the story down beyond the verge of the Revolution: the events of which are reserved for a second volume. The first, ending with the invasion of Hungary Proper by Jellachich, in September, 1848, opens with some notices of the life of Kossuth before he began to shine in public affairs; from which period his history is identified with that of his country. The latter has evidently been compiled by Herr Frey in haste as well as in heat; and is taken, without much order or proportion, from reports of the Pesth National Assembly, from newspaper articles, and from anonymous correspondence,-so rudely put together as to produce a confused and perplexing effect. We must try to compress into a few columns the substance of what is here to be learnt of Kossuth himself; and some of the cardinal events on which that determination of the Hungarian nation turned, the results of which have been electrifying Europe.

Louis (Lajos) Kossuth was born in 186, of indigent parents, in a village in the county

32