[363] The London and Birmingham Railway is unquestionably the greatest public work ever executed, either in ancient or modern times. If we estimate its importance by the labour alone which has been expended on it, perhaps the Great Chinese Wall might compete with it; but when we consider the immense outlay of capital which it has required,--the great and varied talents which have been in a constant state of requisition during the whole of its progress,--together with the unprecedented engineering difficulties, which we are happy to say are now overcome,--the gigantic work of the Chinese sinks totally into the shade.
It may be amusing to some readers, who are unacquainted with the magnitude of such an undertaking as the London and Birmingham Railway, if we give one or two illustrations of the above assertion. The great pyramid of Egypt, that stupendous monument which seems likely to exist to the end of all time, will afford a comparison.
After making the necessary allowances for the foundations, galleries, &c., and reducing the whole to one uniform denomination, it will be found that the labour expended on the great _pyramid_ was equivalent to lifting fifteen thousand seven hundred and thirty-three million cubic feet of stone one foot high. This labour was performed, according to Diodoras Siculus by three hundred thousand, to Herodotus by one hundred thousand men, and it required for its execution twenty years.
If we reduce in the same manner the labour, expended in constructing the London and Birmingham Railway, to one common denomination, the result is twenty-five thousand million cubic feet of material (reduced to the same weight as that used in constructing the pyramid) lifted one foot high, or nine thousand two hundred and sixty-seven million cubic feet more than was lifted one foot high in the construction of the pyramid; yet this immense undertaking has been performed by about twenty thousand men in less than five years.
From the above calculation have been omitted all the tunnelling, culverts, drains, ballasting, and fencing, and all the heavy work at the various stations, and also the labour expended on engines, carriages, wagons, &c. These are set off against the labour of drawing the materials of the pyramid from the quarries to the spot where they were to be used--a much larger allowance than is necessary.
As another means of comparison, let us take the cost of the railway and turn it into pence, and allowing each penny to be one inch and thirty-four hundredths wide, it will be found that these pence laid together, so that they all touch, would more than form a continuous band round the earth at the equator.
As a third mode of viewing the magnitude of this work, let us take the circumference of the earth in round numbers at one hundred and thirty million feet. Then, as there are about four hundred million cubic feet of earth to be moved in the railway, we see that this quantity of material alone, without looking to any thing else, would, if spread in a band one foot high and one foot broad, more than three times encompass the earth at the equator.--LECOUNT.
[364] Saturday Magazine.
[365] Saturday Magazine.
[366] Monthly Magazine.
[367] Harmonies of Nature.
[368] Strabo mentions the sepulchre, lib. xvii. p. 808.
[369] Herodotus; Diodorus; Strabo; Pliny; Plutarch; Arrian; Quintus Curtius; Rollin; Maupertuis; Montague; Maillet; Pococke; Shaw; Savary; Norden; Sandwich; Browne; Denon; Belzoni; Salt; Clarke; Wilkinson; Lecount.