his rapidity of utterance, variety and impressiveness of action, and harmonious tones of voice, now deep and richly melodious in the expression of solemn emotion, now loud and piercing in the excitement of passion, almost defy description. Imagine Imagine all the beauties of Kean's performance of Othello crowded into half an hour's highly sustained eloquence, and you have some tangible idea of what is the effect. While the impulse is upon him he seems as if possessed, his nature is stirred to its very depths, the fountains of his soul pour forth unceasingly the living waters. His head glows like a ball of fire, the soul struggles through every outlet of expression. His arms now raised aloft, as if in imprecation, are, in a moment, extended downwards, as if in supplication, the clenched fingers clasped like those of one in strong agony. Anon, and the small, thin, delicate, wiry hand, is stretched forth, the face assumes an expression the very ideal of the sarcastic, and the finger of scorn is pointed towards the object of attack. A thousand varying expressions, each powerful and all beautiful, are crowded into the brief time during which his excite

ment (which, like that of actors, though prepared, is genuine while it lasts) hurries him on to pour forth his whole soul in language of such elegance and force.

Mr. Sheil occupies a position different from that of most of his countrymen in parliament. The Irish member who most approaches him in intellectual qualities, though not in actual eloquence, is Mr. Wyse. Like Mr. Wyse, he has associated himself with the Whig party, who chose him to be one of their ministers when they desired to fraternize with the Irish Catholics, because he was at once talented, moderate, and respectable. For joining them, he has been made the subject of virulent abuse by the extreme party in Ireland; but he has too much steadiness of purpose and good sense to be much affected by it. His position in the House is well earned, not merely by his eloquence, but also by the general amenity of his disposition, whether as a politician or a private individual. Were all the Irish members like Mr. Sheil, the Irish question might be speedily and satisfactorily settled.

RAILROADS have awakened so much interest of late, interest so profoundly melancholy in those who have approached the subject as stags, so eager and hopeful in those who look at it as a pecuniary investment, or as an immense national question, that we feel little apology is due to the readers of the Magazine for dedicating a few pages to a railroad dispute which is going on with great activity at this moment-the dispute of the broad and narrow gauges. A number of pamphlets have been sent to us upon this question, with the Commissioners' Report, and an abstract of the lengthened examinations into which those gentlemen entered. We have before us, A Railway Traveller's Reasons for Adopting Uniformity of Gauge; Railway Eccentrics, exemplifying the Inconsistencies of Men of Genius; The Gauge Question, by Wyndham Harding; The Broad Gauge the Bane of the Great Western Company; The Broad and Narrow Gauge, by Henry Lushington, Esq.; Reply to the Observations of the Great Western Railway Company; and, Gauge Evidence: the History and Prospects of the Railway System; Illustrated by the Evidence given before the Gauge Commission, by Samuel Sidney, with a Map.

The Railway Traveller takes a rapid and pathetic view of the luggage and umbrella question.

He

points out the inconvenience families suffer in turning out at Gloucester at the break of gauge. He asks Mr.

Brunel how he would like Mrs. Brunel and her children to be subject to the same annoyance? "Jeanies of Buckley Square" has published a little pamphlet in Punch upon the same side. Jeames says he lost his infant at Gloucester, and until he acknowledges the recovery of that interesting child, leaves the world to suppose that Mr. Brunel, in a manner, is guilty of its abstraction.

"Railway Eccentrics" are Messrs. Brunel and Saunders, the two chief advocates of the broad gauge, who are both brought to book for having, at former periods of their existence, uttered quite different opinions on various railway matters to those

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCVIII.

The

which they now advocate. largest work of the anti-Brunel series is that of Mr. Sidney.

Mr. Samuel Sidney opens his "Brief History of the Gauge Question" with an apt quotation from Captain Law's evidence: "We owe all our railways to the collieries in the north the difficulties which their industry overcame taught us to make railways, and to make locomotives to work them." The coalowners and workers of Northumberland and Durham, wanting to transport their coal from the pit's mouth to the water, invented tram-roads. Seeing the success of these, the merchants and manufacturers of Liverpool and Manchester bethought them of making use of similar means for the transport of their goods between these two great towns, and did not, in their first undertaking, contemplate any thing beyond "a solidly constructed tram-way worked by horse-power."

George Stephenson was the man whom the Liverpool and Manchester manufacturers employed to execute their plan. Before the works were completed, he had discovered that "carriages driven by steam were capable of surmounting gradients of considerable altitude by the force of their weight alone, and proposed to employ locomotive instead of horsepower for the merchandise and passenger traffic." The gauge, or width between the rails, adopted on the Liverpool and Manchester line, was four feet eight and a-half inches, which has since been designated the "Narrow Gauge."

The idea of a steam locomotive caused much alarm to a body of the shareholders. They took counsel with two eminent engineers, one engaged in public works, and the other in steam-engine building; and both these authorities, in a "very able document," proved the practical and commercial inexpediency of Mr. Stephenson's project. Two of Stephenson's pupils-Robert, his son, and Joseph Locke-answered this document in another still more able; for the horse scheme was abandoned, and the company determined on trying

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