One of cha it over Bar . omnibuses between Paddington and the Bank is at this time a virtual monopoly, but which could not remain a monopoly, if the accommodation of the public were not kept up to the extreme limit, as regards convenience and economy." rails would pervade all streets of much traffic, getting rid of dirt, wear, noise, and horses slipping. And for the first time it would become a practicable thing to have an economic public street carriage with two separate portions, one for the working classes in their working clothes, and the Respecting the great economical advantalear other for the working classes in their ges to be attained by cheap transit in faciliholiday clothes, when on equal terms with tating the carriage of goods, and general the leisure classes. Such a system of urban mercantile and agricultural facilities, we and suburban transit would be equivalent to think there can be no dispute, but, beyond Sq doubling the size of towns, bringing the all this, there is the great question of moral outskirts within rapid reach of the centre. progress, of the education of the whole The present omnibus is a blessing to the community, by bringing man in contact community, but we trust ere long to see the with man, and things. Time was that no hday that it will be laid aside as antiquated gentleman's education was considered per redit 1umber of a bygone time, when the science fect, till he had "made the grand tour." of transit was but just outgrowing its in- There was a deep philosophy in this remark, fancy. Such a system of tram rails would though it did not follow that every gentlequae have the effect of removing manufacturers man who made the tour reaped the benefit from the interior of towns, to the flat exte-aimed at. "The proper study of mankind hterior districts, which seem almost set apart is man," but many of the mankind might as the for such purposes. The neighbourhoods of well have stopped at home and have sent pr Chelsea, Battersea, South Lambeth, Dept- their portmanteaus instead, for all the good ford, Rotherhithe, Bow Common, the Isle of they got. The defect in the matter was, theDogs, the Plaistow level, and similar spots, that travelling was so costly as to be proonce intersected with efficient tram roads, hibited to all but the very wealthy. Not Bwould infallibly draw to them the greater every boy who goes to school becomes a B part of the manufacturers now engaged in the scholar, but not therefore ought any one to heart of the town in producing smoke and be debarred. "Cockney" and "bumpkin " other nuisances, prejudicial to the health of are both terms of reproach-one for ignothe wealthy. We trust that some enter-rance of all but town things, the other for prising men, alive to their own interests, as ignorance of all but country things. The well as that of the community, will give to very growth of the term is a public recogched this "airy nothing" of our propounding "a nition of the advantages of travel in the relocal habitation and a name :" "The Me-moval of ignorance. Upon travel-upon tropolitan Junction Tramway." The econo- the knowledge of one nation by another, my of maintenance of such tramiroads would depends the peace of nations, and one of be so apparent, the absence of noise and the great advantages of commerce, is its dirt would be so obvious, that they would tendency to promote this knowledge. All rapidly spread into all districts, and we feel these things are truisms, but it can be ma persuaded that after awhile trams for car- scarcely accounted superfluous to state riage wheels would be as indispensable a them, when we find an influential chairman part of street structure, as side pavements of railways telling a committee of the House of Commons that he considers cheap travelling a mischief to the community. e Jare. d be the best! The principle of the main central lines ith radiating from the Post office would be, to Men congregate together in large bodies have wide roads with the trams laid in the for economical purposes, and thence has centre a double line and leaving the come the growth of cities too densely peowide spaces for turns out, and ordinary pled for health. Convenience, not liking, traffic. It would be quite practicable to ar- has produced this. Absence of the means range the tram wheels, so that they would of cheap and rapid transit, caused streets to run on the ordinary road. A regular speed be built with inefficient air passages; and being established for the tram roads, they we find that first the nobles, and then the should be open for all constructing carriages citizens, and so on to the clerks and shopfor them, and such carriages should be re- keepers, gradually took to living out of town, gistered, and pay an annual contribution to as fast as the means of conveyance increasthe road owners. There is little doubt that ed. Had these means of conveyance exthe traffic would thus be in a few hands, that isted at the outset, the buildings would never it would be a monopoly, but it would be a have been so crowded together, and nothing monopoly maintained only by doing the best but making the means of conveyance artififor the public, precisely as the running of cially dear, can prevent the towns and cities expens from expanding. In London, during hot and stagnant weather, if at all moist, the animal effluvia from the breath cannot get away with sufficient rapidity, and fevers are the result. Spread the town over double the space, and this evil will be greatly alleviated. Rents will fall from their artificially high prices; accommodations will be increased and improved, and the poor will obtain wholesome dwellings, without being driven to an inconvenient distance from their employments. lance; and if such roads are regularly washed to clear away the manure, there would be neither mud nor dust. deni p Absence of the means of cheap and rapid transit, which has heaped dwellings together, caused people to gather around them in close proximity the means of amusement and instruction. While London was small, Tottenham Court, Marylebone, Bagnigge Wells, Bayswater, the Jew's Harp, Chalk tet Farm, Vauxhall, and similar places sufficed, but they are now nearly all covered with s And upon the means of transit materially houses, become a part of the town; and depends the cleanliness of a town. The part of the public amusement now isgreatest cause of dirt in a town is the trac-skittles played in public-house cellars. tion of wheel carriages by means of horses. Steam on the river has done much, by bring The worse the road the greater the number ing the river towns and villages within of horses to perform the work. The worst reach of London at moderate cost, but this street road in ordinary use is the Macadam- does not accomplish the great requisite, ized road, taking all circumstances into the cheap and rapid land travel. account. It is continually grinding away, For all purposes of recreation and infrom its first loose state, through the pro-struction this is requisite, and for a higher di cess of hardening, till the crust again breaks purpose still, that of religious education; through, and the whole of the broken stones and hence we know we shall have with us have been converted into mud or dust. the large and influential body called PuseyTraction in this loose material is very heavy. ites, as well as most other religious teachers. The next in order is the paved road, which in In the thickest haunts of the most miserasmall blocks is horribly noisy, and in which, ble indwellers of the town, do we find the ti the under surface is continually squeezed up most superb gin palaces. In the same between the joints. With large blocks, of haunts do we now find churches planted; sufficient size not to sink with the blows of and what is more extraordinary, we comthe wheels of heavy waggons, the slipping monly find a new church planted side by of the horses' feet is increased. The wood-side with a gas-work. A burying-ground, en road is the best, when applied so as to a church, a gas-work, a gin palace, and a form merely a wearing surface to a Macad- narrow lane lined with hovels; such is the amized road of sufficient solidity, but want spot on which a Christian community is of cleanliness renders this kind of road very gathered together for worship. "Verily slippery in moist weather, though not so ye have made the house of your father in a either in dry or wet weather. The cause den " of devils. It is time that this were is, the horsedung or animal mucus. To amended. A narrow street is no place for & prevent the horses from slipping, the obvi- temple, though it be the church of St. ous process is to wash the streets clean, but Paul; the feverish air of a city is not the instead of that, the surface is spoiled by breath of life fitted to pour forth hymns of grooving, thus creating cavities for the re- praise to the Eternal. Cease to preach te tention of dung, and doubling the resistance down man's senses; cease to teach him that of draught, requiring double horse power, he must breathe the poisonous air of the increasing noise, and wearing away the sur- cellar, or of the garret in the city lane, durface in half the time. Noise arises from ing the whole day of rest, in order that he concussion-from the wheels jumping in- may attend his parish church. Ministers of stead of rolling, and more noise is found religion! try who shall be first in the career on a grooved wooden pavement than on a of natural religion. Build ye your temples level stone tram, as those who have passed on the high places! The hills and heaths over the trams in some of the streets adja- of the land are the spots consecrated by nacent to Cheapside, can testify. In its best ture, and fitted to bring forth the higher feelstate, the wood pavement produces a far ings of man's inner being. The hills and heavier draught than a smooth stone or iron the heaths, which they who hold the nar surface, and iron is the best, as being the row doctrine, "that man shall live by bread most durable. If, therefore, iron trams be alone," would cut and carve and enclose, laid for the wheels, and wood blocks for the and make into rectangular working grounds, horses' feet, we shall attain the maximum for the growth of corn,-those hills and of adhesion with the minimum of resist-heaths are the fitting places to breathe into man's nostrils the breath of life for the glad- the strange anomalies of Westminster school, dening of all his senses, to pour into his ears and similar establishments. The poor were the words of religious poetry, and create fain to be content with the day school, or a soul from under the ribs of the moral death the parish school-free air was too great a into which he has been plunged, amidst the luxury for them. The church, the chapel, reeking stews of corruption that surround the lecture room, the concert room, the his parish church, and excel it in attraction. theatre, were all reared in impure places, "God made the country, and man made and their uses confined to the inhabitants of the town." And now that man hath prac- towns. All this is within remedy, as the tically annihilated both time and space, by uses of the railway become developed. The the spirit within him that hath taught his poor man can have his accessible country right hand the cunning whereby he may dwelling. Churches and chapels may be achieve his escape from darkness into light, reared in beautiful spots at the confluence let the country once more be devoted to of lines of railway-temples worthy of God's uses for the many, instead of being man's nature, where man may meet man in confined to the few. "Man shall not live Christian equality, where all benign influby bread alone, but by every word that pro- ences may be at work, attracting but not ceedeth out of the mouth of God." The compelling; where architecture, music, and words of God's mouth are written on moun- painting-the beautiful in art, may combine tain and moor, on heath and hill, on wood with the beautiful in nature. When the and forest, brook and river, ocean and sea. promoters of religion shall work by the aid They who would blot out the face of nature of nature, instead of striving to counteract and make the whole land artificial, would her, when they shall enable the workingdestroy one of man's noblest faculties, the classes to pluck wild flowers, as well as power of appreciating nature. They would "ears of corn on the Sabbath day," when destroy God's handwriting, and substitute they shall make for them a healthy and for it artificial signs. We hope, we trust, we believe, that this shall not come to pass. We trust that the wild lands of England, the Mount Horebs of the soil, the spots that nature hath made difficult of cultivation, as though she had said, "these are reserved," the wild gardens of the poor man, in which the purple heath and the yellow gorse flourish self-planted-the old forest patches, the Charts and the Commons, the Combes and the Hursts, the wildernesses of the land,- till, taught by HIM who gathered the multiwe trust that the rich man's plough shall tude around him in the open fields of Galinever pass over these, the poor man's in- lee-the "lilies," his text; trust in their heritance. Up and be doing, ministers of Creator, his homily-"They look through religion! Plant your cross in such places, nature up to nature's God." pleasant path to the temple; then will the "On either side the river lie * rye. But up and down the people go, and shadow them with your protection. For most purposes of public instruction Not as the heads of the church-he of Can- and amusement, we see no reason why peoterbury hath done, enclosing a poor ple should not congregate together in desiraman's common for a private park, but shut- ble railway localities; on the contrary, many ting out for ever the spoilers of Naboth's reasons why they should. The fact of peovineyard. Proclaim that the high places ple congregating in numbers at a given spot, and wild places are set apart for the worship and at a given time, would be sufficient inof nature's God, and build ye your temples ducement for putting on special trains for at their entrances, for the seasons when the going and returning. A religious teacher rains of heaven shall fall, and a wintry sky could select a central spot whereon to build require artificial warmth. a temple, and draw a congregation from all The great work is nearly wrought, the points. Speculative builders would erect problem solved, whereby the natural man lecture rooms and theatres, to be occupied and the cultivated man may become one, in turn by successive lecturers and compawhereby the city may be rescued from its nies. People do not require lectures or squalor, and field and forest from their igno- plays night after night, they require them at rance. The yearning for this has always intervals, and men of genius might traverse existed in men's minds. People confined to the whole country and spread their benefitowns by their daily avocations placed their cial influence far and near, by means of children at school in country air-when cheap and rapid transit, gathering their authey possessed pecuniary means-excepting diences around them at central spots. And at such spots, cheap, simple and convenient late discussions upon the principle of Athostelries would arise, on the principle of mospheric Traction. small profits and large returns. Most thoroughly do we sympathize with the speculation set on foot by Mr. Wilkinson, carrying an atmospheric railway through the beautiful districts of Surrey and Kent, opening up to public enjoyment those exquisite spots which have hitherto been confined to the wealthy. For the first time, probably, will the powers of the railway be made available to produce the minimum expense of transit to the public, with a remunerating profit to the capitalist, and this will have been accomplished by a free trader an anti-monopolist-a disciple of the Ricardo school of political economy. Without noise, without dust, without smoke, without visible steam, will people glide Through the town and out at the street, While a light wind blows from the gates of the sun, And waves of shadow pass over the wheat. The result of six years' practical experience in the manufacturing and working of pneumatic ma chinety has led me to the conclusion that this in its application to railway traction, as well as to mode of transferring power by exhaustion must, other purposes, be attended with a certain loss (in dependent of that arising from leakage and friction); a loss which increases in proportion as the exhaustion approaches to a perfect vacuum, but which may be in part avoided; while there are some obvious advantages to be set off against it. vacuum engine, and ascertaining the dimensions We commence by assuming a certain size of of the air pump required to work it. If, then, we calculate the power of the engine, and the force which must be exerted by the prime mover that works the air pump (excluding friction and leak. age in both cases), the difference between the work done by the engine and the power required by the pump, will give the amount of loss; and we shall also in the investigation be enabled to as certain the cause from which this loss arises. We therefore assume an engine with a piston of one foot in area, moving through one foot in any given time,-say one-third of a second, and that the work to be done by this engine is of such a resist ance as to require a pressure of 73 lbs. (or half an atmosphere) on every square inch of the pisce ton. The power exerted by the engine in this space of time (one-third of a second) will equal **We subjoin, as an appendix to the the area of the piston multiplied by the pressure above, the following note from a correspond-on each inch, and then by the space moved ent upon the scientific questions involved in through. Inches area of piston. This equals 144 exerted through one inch. G. A. H. lbs. pressure per inch. An engine of these dimensions would admit one cubic foot of atmospheric air in one-third of a second into the pipes leading to the exhausting pump; and as the density of the air in these pipes would, by the proposition, be only half that of the atmosphere (the density being as the pressure), it follows that this foot of air would expand to double its bulk. To maintain the same degree of rarefaction in the pipes, it also follows that the exhausting pump must be capable of exhausting these two feet of air in the same space of time that was occupied in their admission; that is to say, the air pump must be of one foot area of piston, and two feet motion, and must make an equal number of strokes with the engine which it works. Having thus ascertained the size of the pump, the next question is to determine the power required to work it. In the following diagram of the pump, O represents the piston at its lowest point, and ready to commence its upward motion. S, the valve through which the air is drawn from the pipes F; and D, the delivery valve, by which the air will escape that had been drawn from the pipes F into the upper part of the pump by the valve E during the down stroke. G is the discharge valve for the bottom part of the pump. Inches space moved through. X 12 =3 12,960 lbs. parts of the stroke. The curved line M N, passing through their extremities, shows by its distance from the perpendicular PQ the pressure at any other part. The upper part of the pump being filled with air drawn from the pipes F, it follows that when the piston, by its upward motion, begins to take air from these same pipes, it will have an equal pressure above and below it, as indicated by the O at this level a. When the piston has made three inches of upward motion, viz., to b, the air in the upper part will be compressed from twenty-four to twenty-one inches, and its pressure will be increased in an inverse proportion. This, by calcu lation, will be found to amount to 1 1-14lbs. per square inch. Repeating this calculation at c, d, and e, we shall find the pressure to be increased to 2lbs. 44lbs., and 74lbs. respectively. We may approx imate to the mean pressure between a and e, by calculating it at a number of places, and taking the average; or we may ascertain it accurately by using the formula for expanding steam (of w which, in fact, this we are now considering is the converse). By this formula, we find the average pressure from a to e to be very nearly 2.9lbs. per square inch. By the arrival of the piston at e (the The lines a, b, c, d, e, placed three inches above half stroke), the air contained above it will be reeach other, represent by their lengths the pressure stored to its original atmospheric bulk and pres on every square inch of the piston at each of these sure, and will therefore raise the valve D, and E 值 Area of Pump one foot. lbs., and by the length of stroke (twelve inches) between a and e; and secondly, the addition to this of the multiplication of the piston's area by 74lbs., and by the twelve inches remaining of the stroke above e. make its escape. The pressure on the piston, | piston multiplied by the average pressure of 2.9 consequently, for the remainder of the stroke cannot exceed the 7 lbs. which it had attained at e (being the required pressure in the pipes assumed at first). Having thus ascertained the pressure, we can easily find the power required to work the pump. This will equal, firstly, the area of the work done by engine as previ. ously cal. culated. X 2.9 1 Ibs. pressure length of above e. 7% stroke above e. 12 the the RE The difference between these two amounts of the second the enormous amount of 13-20th. As 5,011lbs., the power required to work the pump previous to the opening of the delivery valve D, is the loss which in this case of 7lbs. pressure, equals 278 of the whole force (17,971lbs.) employed in working the pump. a practical proof of the above, I may mention that on the Dalkey railway high speeds have been found most economical, which is equivalent to saying that light trains, requiring a less perfect exhaustion, are found most economical. As connected with the preceding calculations, I may refer to the following statements of some of the pneumatic machines which have come under my notice, and which I have had the very best opportunities for observing. So that exclusive of the waste arising from leakage, friction, and another cause which has to be considered, viz., the heating of the air, 40-horse power employed in working an air pump would only develope 28.88 at the pneumatic engine. As the loss has been shown to be equal to that part of In the years 1839 and 1840 Mr. John Hague, the power required to work the pump previous to late of Rotherhithe, erected at Mr. Butler's coal-pit the opening of the delivery valve D, and as the at Lydbrook, in the Forest of Dean, one of his percentage of that part of the whole power evident-pneumatic pumping machines. Previously to the ly increases the nearer we approach to a perfect erection of this machinery, the steam engine to vacuum, it is obviously an important point to con- which the air pump was afterwards applied, sider at how low a pressure it may be practicable raised by ordinary lift pumps 550 gallons of water to work machinery of this kind instead of endea- per minute from the same depth, the vacuum youring (as is too commonly done), to get the gauge indicating about 10lbs. or twenty inches. gauge to as high a point as possible. If, for exam-By calculating the loss arising from working at ple, we calculate the loss arising from working at this pressure, we shall find that the work done for Jb and at 14lbs. pressure, we shall find it in the the power employed is as 330 to 550, which agrees first case only 1-29th of the whole power, and in very nearly with the actual result. |
