The possibilities, to be sure, are limited. Aristocratic exclusiveness confines the Garter to twenty-five persons, the Order of the Thistle is only for Scotch nobles, and the Iron Cross of Savoy is purely Italian; military or naval services are required for the St. George of Russia and the Victoria Cross; and it is to be feared that some sort of illustrious services would be needed even for the Leopold of Belgium, the Iron Cross of Prussia, the St. James of Spain, or the Tower and Sword of Portugal. But in the little principalities of Germany, where the people are ravenous for titular distinctions, there is a large supply; and as, in fine, there are said to be sixscore orders of chivalry scattered over both Christian and Mussulman lands, a wealthy aspirant may not despair of reaching one or two of them without the pangs of knight errantry.
Baron von Weber, a distinguished English engineer, predicts that the Channel tunnel between England and France, if constructed, will be the cause of great annoyance to English railway managers, and bring forward some very acute observations in support of this opinion.
_The English railway system was a world of its own_; it was an insular world which could hardly have been more peculiar if it had belonged to another quarter of the globe altogether. All this, however, will change as soon as the tunnel is pierced between England and the Continent.
_England will then no longer be an island, but a peninsula_, and although the isthmus which connects it with the Continent will be submarine, its effect on the railway system will be exactly the same as if it were a natural one.
If the importance of the object to be attained by the Channel tunnel is to bear any rational proportion at all to the means required, the tunnel will be constructed only if a very considerable goods traffic between the two shores is expected, besides the large passenger traffic. Such a traffic, which would have to compete with sea carriage, is only possible for goods if shifting the loads is completely avoided, and the wagons and trucks can run from England far into the Continent and _vice versa_. Now the English exports to the Continent far exceed the imports from it. The English trucks, therefore, loaded with rails, machines, coals, cotton goods, etc., will, after passing the tunnel, be scattered far and wide on the continental railways (whose length exceeds threefold that of the whole British system), and will have to run distances five times as great as from London to the Highlands.