Genre:

Reportage, Drollery

Subjects:

Railways, Engineering, Steamships

    Praises the Great Western Railway as a 'wonderful triumph of cash and pick-axes over obstacles of a fiscal as well as of an earthy nature'. Likens the Great Britain, a steamer that, despite its powerful engines, could only get out to sea if all the docks and half the city of Bristol were pulled down, to 'George the Third's apple [...] in the dumpling'. (103) Compares the Clifton Suspension Bridge unfavourably to the Hungerford Suspension Bridge.