“Egad! if the weather proves cold here, what will you find it at home,
in Scotland?” said Studhome, as we trod to and fro; for there is no
knocking the idea out of an Englishman’s head that the distance of some
four hundred miles or so must make a more than Muscovite difference in
soil and temperature; but it was cold–intensely so.

The air was clear, and amid the blue ether the stars sparkled brightly.
Snow, white and glistening, covered all the roofs of the houses and the
line of the railway, and the Medway shone coldly, like polished silver,
under the seven arches of its bridge, in the light of the rising moon;
and now, with a shrill, vicious whistle, and many a rapidly iterated
grunt and clank, came the iron horse that was to bear me on my way, as
it tore into the station, with its mane of smoke, and its red
bull’s-eyes that shed two steady flakes of light along the snow-covered
line of rails.

The passengers were all muffled to their noses, and their breath coated
and obscured the glasses of the carefully-closed windows.

Pitblado brought me _Punch_, the _Times_, and “Bradshaw,” and then
rushed to secure his second-class seat; Studhome bade me farewell, and
retired to join Wilford, Scriven, and some others of the corps, who
usually met at a billiard-room, near the barracks, leaving me to arrange
my several wrappers, and enjoy the society of one whom he laughingly
termed my railway belle–a stout female with a squalling imp, whom,
notwithstanding my secret and confidential tip of half-a-crown, the
deceitful guard had thrust upon me; and then, with another shriek and a
steady and monotonous clanking, the train swept out of the station. The
town vanished with its county court house, barracks, river, and the fine
tower of All Saints’ Church; and in a twinkling I could survey the
snow-covered country stretching for miles on each side of me, as we
scoured along the branch line to the Paddock Wood, or Maidstone Road
Junction, of the London and Dover Railway, where I got the up train from
Canterbury.

Swiftly went the first-class express. The fifty-six miles were soon
done, and in an hour I was amid the vast world, the human wilderness of
London, even while worthy Jack Studhome’s merry smile and hearty
good-bye seemed to linger before me. How glorious it is to travel thus,
with all the speed and luxury that money in these our days can command!

A hundred years hence how will they travel–our grandchildren? Heaven
alone knows.

I was now four-and-twenty. I had been six years with the lancers, and
already the novelty of the service–though loving it not the less–was
gone; and I was glad, as I have said, to escape for a month from a life
of enforced routine, and the nightly succession of balls, card and
supper parties among the garrison hacks or _passe_ belles, whose names
and flirtations are standing jokes at the messes of our ungrateful
lancers, hussars, and dragoon guards, wherever they are stationed, from
Calcutta to Colchester, and from Poonah to Piershill.

A day soon passed amid the whirl of London, and night saw me once more
seated in the _coupe_ of a well-cushioned carriage for the north.

This time I was alone, and had the ample seat all to myself, thereon to
lounge with all the ease of a sybarite; and with the aid of a
brandy-flask, cigars, and warm wrappers and plaids, prepared for the
dreary journey of a winter night.

On, on went the train!

Lights, crimson and green, flashed at times out of the darkness. Here
and there the tall poplars of the midland counties stood up, like
spectres in the moonlight, above the snow-clad meadows. Hollowly we
rumbled through the subterranean blackness of a tunnel; out in the snow
and moonlight again, amid other scenes and places. Anon, a hasty shout
from some pointsman would make me start when just on the eve of dropping
asleep; or it might be a sudden stoppage amid the lurid glare of
furnaces, forges, and coalpits, where, night and day, by spells and
gangs the ceaseless work went on. Then it was the shrill whistling and
clanking of the train, the bustle, running to and fro of men with
lanterns, the banging of doors, tramping, and voices, with the clink of
hammers upon the iron wheels, as their soundness was tested, which
announced that we were at Peterborough, at York, or Darlington.

But every station, whether we tarried or rushed past it, seemed
wonderfully alike. There were always repetitions of the same glazed
advertisements in gilt frames; the same huge purple mangold-wurzel, with
its tuft of green leaves; the same man in the hat and surtout, with the
alpaca umbrella, under the ceaseless shower of rain; Lea and Perrin’s
sauce-bottles; somebody else’s patent shirt; the florid posters of
_Punch_, the _Illustrated News_, and the _London Journal_; and the same
parti-coloured volumes of railway literature.

Rapidly we rushed through England. Yorkshire and its Ridings were left
behind, and now the Borders, the old land of a thousand battles and a
thousand songs, drew near–the brave green Borders, with all their
solemn hills, upheaved in the light of the faded stars.

Grey dawn of the coming day saw us traversing the fertile Merse, with
glimpses of the gloomy German sea, tumbling its whitened waves upon
bleak promontories of rock, such as Dunbar, Fastcastle, and the bare,
black headland of St. Abb. Then, as I neared home, and saw the sun
brightening on the snow-covered summits of Dirlton and Traprainlaw, many
an old and long-forgotten idea, and many a sad and affectionate thought
of the past years, came back to memory, in the dreary hour of the early
winter morning.