It is among such old places that we generally look for haunted houses. We suppose it is impossible for ghosts to live in well-lit, cheerful domiciles; at all events, they never take up their quarters in new houses, and genteel villas they seem to detest; and we confess we rather applaud their taste in this particular. Your fine old solemn mansion is, however, sure at some time of its existence to contract a ghost, and if it is gloomy enough, or has a dark yew-tree or two shading its courts, it is pretty sure to keep it. Spiritual personages of all kinds, from the old monks downwards, are certain to be associated with comfortable quarters, and be sure that a haunted house has some very good parts about it; an advertisement for one of these afflicted tenements will often succeed in procuring the very kind of place a person with a little poetry in his composition would like to have. There is another kind of haunted house, however, which always strikes us with dismay-the house haunted by the Court of Chancery. In the country there may be something sentimental in the dreary, hopeless state of a human habitation, as poor Hood has shown; but there is something horribly repulsive in the appearance of a house in town in this deplorable condition. There was a place on Snow Hill which was long perishing of law, dirt, and filth, in the midst of the ever-flowing stream of human life; and in Stamford Street, Southwark, again, there were several in a like condition -their windows smashed, their paint decayed, and the ironwork rusting, but still holding out-ghastly spectacles of the self-imposed ruin of their owners. Sometimes the billstickers will boldly take possession; and we remember a house in Long Acre that was in this way pasted up, hermetically sealed, by huge posters, displaying gigantic trousers equally tenantless.

What a chapter might be written on the class of Arabs who take care of houses! This subject, however, is a psychological study that cannot be discussed at the end of an article, and we may take another opportunity of considering the subject in the light it deserves.

THE EFFECTS OF RAILWAY TRAVELLING

UPON HEALTH.

THE Editor of the Lancet sometime since published a series of "sensation articles" on this interesting subject. We have been so long accustomed to consider the Railway as a means of redressing the evils consequent upon continuous labour in crowded cities, that we are somewhat startled to find it looked upon askant by medical authorities. The means of escaping from the over-fatigues of commercial and professional life are denounced as productive of evils even of a more deadly nature. This is a matter which directly affects the daily habits of thousands of the flower of the metropolitan population. The bankers, the lawyers, the merchants, and even the retail tradesmen have been migrating every afternoon from this brick Babel of ours to the quiet and seclusion of the country. Villages of luxurious villas have sprung up along the lines of our railroads, and Brighton has, in fact, been rendered a mere suburb of the metropolis by the aid of the five o'clock express. The early morning sees these human swallows return, and the steady sterling Englishman who never strayed of old beyond the sound of Bow Bells, is now become a bird of rapid passage. All he loves lies far beyond his ken, far away over the breezy downs or bright pastures. To fly by night to the sea-coast, he takes the train, as his father would an omnibus journey to Brompton, and the season ticket which enables him to "do" his hundred miles a day is reckoned as a portion of his rent. But is this rapid change of venue a thing of such unmixed good? This question has been gravely asked, and we think answered, in the most unmistakable manner, in

the negative. Take a glance at the stream of respectable men, carpet-bag in hand, to be seen hurrying over London Bridge any evening about a quarter to five. You see at a glance that they are well-to-do citizens, who have attained, if not passed, the prime of life. Indeed, it is only Paterfamilias who can afford to indulge in his marine villa. Now, it so happens that this specimen of humanity is the very worst that could be selected for this daily process of being twice bumped or concussed across the South Downs. Dr. Waller Lewis, in his report to the Lancet, tells us that it is practically known that only young and selected men can be found to bear the wear and tear of acting as travelling Postoffice clerks, sorters, and guards on the great lines of railway, and that only those are allowed to do the duty. Drivers and stokers are selected in the same careful manner by the railway medical officials. Yet your rich stockbroker or merchant, with a well-filled purse, and possibly a "fatty heart," thinks that he can undertake the same duty, and flatters himself that he catches health as he flies. We believe this to be one of the great delusions of the mercantile world, and that Brighton season tickets have been guilty of more premature deaths to respectable gentlemen than the worst air of the worst part of the metropolis ever has. To begin the hurry and distress of mind to make his business fit so that he shall not lose his train and his dinner, is in itself a source of daily worry to Paterfamilias which he scarcely realizes himself. Then the hurry to the station, the dodging the crowd on the bridge, and the rush for tickets, is in itself a serious cause of mental perturbation. We put it to any Brighton season ticket-holder whether he is not at times obliged to run to catch his train, and we beg to say that gentlemen who have lost the bend in their backs cannot always run with impunity. A friend tells us that he was greatly surprised some time since to find a gentleman sitting in a chair, with a handkerchief over his face, in the open space where they take tickets at the London Bridge Station: on inquiry of one of the porters, he was told that he had just dropped down dead in the room after running to save the train. It is not often that we see such an awful example of the effects of forced bustle thus dramatically placed before our eyes, but be sure that scores of persons drop down dead in the counting-house, or sleep the last sleep in their beds, from this very cause. True, there are some men who keep

stop-watches, and who seem born merely to mark exact time, who are not put out by this daily struggle to fit their minutes; but these are not made of the finest clay-these are not over-burthened with that nervous sensibility which is never absent from high-class organizations, and may bear the fret with impunity; but to the average or better-class man this kind of preparation entirely disturbs his equanimity before he puts his foot into the railway carriage. And here the worry to his nervous system only exchanges its moral for a physical cause. Every man who has travelled by railway must have perceived that, notwithstanding all the appliances to minister to his comfort, he is fatigued in a much shorter time by this method of conveyance than by the rougher journey by common road. He feels quite sore and tired, although he may not have moved—his head aches, and he feels sick; all these are symptoms of concussion of the brain and spinal marrow, and they are, in fact, direct consequences of that cause. When a collision takes place we have concussion in its active form, and mortal injury is done in a moment to passengers exposed to its effects; but in ordinary express travelling, especially on the narrow-gauge lines, the whole journey is made up of an infinite series of minute shocks. "Man and wife," as George Stephenson called the wheel and rail, do not agree. As the carriage oscillates at high speed, the former is continually jolting against the latter, and at every ten or twelve feet the joints of the rails, which are very imperfectly made, cause a jerking motion. In passing rapidly round curves, the oscillation is sometimes frightful, and it is this action which produces the 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 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 middle-aged, 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 how