sense of fatigue and soreness felt in the back, after taking long journeys by express. The reason is obvious. The great nervous high road traversing the spine has to be protected from shock or motion as carefully as a transit instrument in an observatory; and in order to accomplish this, the long case in which it is enclosed is padded in every direction, and innumerable fine ligaments and muscles are attached to it in order that it may be automatically kept in its normal position. Now, the tumbling and jolting of the carriage are constantly calling forth this automatic action of the muscles: hence the tiredness and soreness we experience after a protracted journey. In the well-padded first-class carriages this motion is not so much felt, but in the second and third it is very obvious. The hard wooden seats and backs convey the motion direct to the body, and especially so when the head is inclined against the back, as in that case the minute concussions are carried directly by the bony case of the skull to the brain, and headache and nausea are the immediate results. Persons should never go to sleep so touching the woodwork, as the result is sure to be injurious. Persons who live, as it were, upon the rail, find it absolutely cheaper, on the score of health, to travel in first-class carriages, in order to avoid the unnecessary evils which penurious Directors inflict upon those in the second. But the nervous system is reached also by the special senses; the perpetual grating and grinding of wheels upon rails keeps the tympanum of the ear in constant agitation, and the

eye is tired by the rapid flight of objects. Thus for two hours daily the Brighton season-ticket holder is subjected to nervous concussions and assaults, conveyed to him by half-a-dozen different avenues. Can it be wondered at that, with the feeble and middleaged, the process is sure to be detrimental? "It may have been observed," says the Lancet, "that the Brighton season-ticket holders rapidly age;" and certainly we could expect no other result from the pounding of the nervous system to which they voluntarily submit themselves, under the mistaken idea that they are in search of health. We feel bound to say, however, that well-selected lives, at an early age, seem to take no injury from daily travelling on railways. Dr. Waller Lewis even says that some of the letter-sorters and clerks in the flying post-office actually improve in health and get fat after a few months journeying in this manner. But they have none of the preliminary worry which ordinary passengers have to go through. It is their business to start every day at a certain time, and they have not to struggle for tickets. Dr. Lewis has much mitigated the evils which arise from concussion, by providing the officials with caoutchouc mats. Why should not Railway Directors follow this excellent lead? or why, again we may ask, do they not supply some proper means of ventilation? As it is, when the carriages are full, we must either close the windows, and suffer all the evils of foul air, or subject ourselves to a hurricane by pulling them open. And why should we not have our carriages warmed? Cold is

one of the great antagonists with which the railway passenger has to contend in winter. A night journey to the North is one of the most depressing things in life, for however we may wrap ourselves up, the dawn of morning always finds us out. We very much question if old stage-coach passengers felt so chilled even in crossing Hounslow Heath in the olden time, as a second-class passenger feels in the railroad carriage in winter after a long ride; and the reason is obvious,rushing through the air at the rate express trains go necessarily intensifies the cold to an alarming degree, and the wrappers and furs that would be ample for ordinary temperatures are found to be far from sufficient for the cramped passenger in the arctic night of a railway carriage.

As railway travelling is at present conducted, we cannot in the least doubt that the use of daily season tickets for such lengths as between London and Brighton is a gross violation of the laws of health, and that those who use them, in the majority of cases, are riding to their own destruction. We are given to understand that people are finding this out, and that a great decrease in the issue of long-journey season tickets is the result. But we cannot help thinking that as regards short suburban journeys the gain is entirely on the side of the new method of transit. We are now speaking of those who can afford to ride in first-class padded carriages; second-class riders must suffer if they have to perform their journeys in mere wooden boxes, made as uncomfortable as possible, apparently on principle. Since the injurious

nature of these unstuffed carriages has been demonstrated, we think Directors should be forced to fit them up in a better manner. The advantages of transporting our toiling population from crowded cities to the good air of the country are immeasurably greater than the evil done by the half-hour's journey, performed at low velocities, which is sufficient to reach the most secluded and healthy country districts.

PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITURE.

ΤΕΝ years ago, when the miniature-room of the Royal Academy used to be mobbed by fair women, bent either upon criticising their friends or furtively admiring their own portraits, who could have foreseen that Sol was about to wrest the pencil from the hand of the cunning limner, and annihilate one of the oldest callings connected with the Fine Arts? The income of a Thorburn or a Ross seemed as assured as that of an archbishop against change or curtailment, and no high-born lady's boudoir was complete without a portrait of herself paid for at a princely price. The introduction of the Daguerreotype process, some fiveand-twenty years ago, seemed only to fix more firmly the claims of the brush against the art of the photographer. Tompkins or Hopkins may submit to go down to posterity as livid corpse-like personages; but the Lady Blanche or the fair Geraldine, forbid it, oh Heavens! Presently, however, Fox Talbot appeared upon the scene, and the dull metal, which only enabled you to see your friend glaring at you at an almost impossible angle, gave way to photography, in which the image was fixed upon paper. The