being the nearest road from one tower to the other. An inquest was held
on the following day, and a verdict of accidental death returned. No one
actually engaged in the operation was injured, although Mr. Edwin
Clark, who was superintending the operation, on the top of the
cross-head, and his brother, Mr. L. Clark, who was standing beneath it,
had both a very narrow escape.

"The tube is not at all injured, but some portions of the cast iron
lifting frames are broken, and require repairing; some weeks must elapse
before a new cylinder is made, and the operation continued."

Sir Francis Head, when he saw one of the tubes raised, and in its place,
observed, "It seemed surprising to us that by any arrangement of
materials, it could possibly be made strong enough to support even
itself,--much less heavily laden trains of passengers and goods, flying
through it, and actually passing each other in the air at railway speed.
And the more we called reason and reflection to our assistance, the more
incomprehensible did the mystery practically appear; for the plate iron
of which the aërial gallery is composed is literally _not so thick_ as
the lid, sides, and bottom which, by heartless contract, are _required_
for an elm coffin 6½ feet long, 2¼ wide, and 2 deep, of strength
merely sufficient to carry the corpse of an emaciated pauper from the
workhouse to his grave! The covering of this iron passage, 1841 feet in
length, is literally not thicker than the hide of an elephant; lastly,
it is scarcely thicker than the bark of the good old English oak,--and
if this noble sovereign, notwithstanding 'the heart' and interior
substance of which it boasts, is, even in the well-protected park in
which it has been born and bred, often prostrated by the storm, how
difficult is it to conceive that an attenuated aërial hollow beam, no
thicker than its mere rind, should, by human science, be constructed