The Sun.
London, England, 1857-05-13 00:00:00

RAILWAY TO GENOA.

The little kingdom of Sardinia, for the magnitude
of its material achievements, takes rank imme-
diately after Rome among ancient, and Fngland
among modern States. Already since 1848 a
railway tunnel has been carried through one of the
highest mountain chains in Europe, that of the
Giovi, the Appenine Pass above Genoa. We
question whether railway enterprise has effected
so much with such limited means in any country.
At this moment the Piedmontese Patliament is
being applied to by the indefatigable Count Cavour,
and by the veuerablQ, but unbroken Minister of
Public works, Paleocapa, for the means of carrying
a railway through Mont Cenis, and another
through the Luckmanier on the Alps, between the
Ticino and the Rhine.

We can hardly refrain from hinting at the fact
that both the rulers and the people of those sub-
Alpine countries have always been renowned for the
daring with which they have endeavoured to over-
come the difficulties thrown in their way by the
nature of the rugged region which is their allotted
abode. Early in the fifteenth century—some four
hundred years before Napoleon marched across
the St. Bernard—A Prince of the House of Savoy
was alreaLiy able to convey, in the heart of winter,
a heavy train of the clumsy artillery of medinaval
construction over that same lofty and all but
impervious pass. Later in the same century a
petty Marquis of Saluzzo conceived and executed
a splendid tunnel across the Col de Monte Vise.
In the seventeenth century Charles Emanuel 11.
of Savoy opened through the granite rocks of the
Pass des Echelles a magnificent gallery, which
remains a marvel to the nineteenth. People who
have to undergo the fatigue and tedium of toiling
over mountains may well appreciate the blessing of
being able to bore their way trough them ; and
if railways ever are to convey us through any part
of the high Alps, we shall most certainly have to
thank the sub• Alpine people for it.
The Austrian railway over the Summering, the
lowest of all Alpine passes, though commenced
more than eighteen years since, has well nigh ex-
hausted all the resources of the empire, and it is
nevertheless very doubtful whether it will come to
an end before the Piedmontese have emphatically
proclaimed to the world that II n'y a plus d'Alpes
on their side.

The tunnel, projected by Sardinian engineers,
across Mont Cenis, from Bardonneche, in Val
Susa, to Modane, in Maurienne or Savoy, cannot
be completed iu less than seven years. The Sar-
dinian Government will contribute 40,000,000
francs towards defraying the expense ; 20,000,000
francs more will be paid down by the Victor Ema-
nuel Railway Company. For the works of the
Lucktrianier Railway the Sardinian Government
proposes a first outlay of 10,000,000 francs.
At a first glance it seems very natural that Pied-
mont should show the greatest anxiety for the com-
pletion of the Mont Cenis Railway. The road runs
through Sardinian lands on either side.
rail-
way from Turin to Susa, and the otherhlfarmomh_
erSyt:
Jean de Maurienne, or from Modane to c
Aix, and eventually to Lyons
71d Geneva, are
be completed
either already in operation or w
ere the end of the year. That Liguria, f
Piedmont,
and
highway
and Savoy should be made the
certainly an object
Mediterranean to the ocean, from Genoa and Turin
to Lyons, Prtrisandonfdoorn,
of primary importance iis
Sardinia, for Italy, for
Europe. Yet we should. not hesitate to assert that
the Luokmanier road will be deemed to be of even
greater moment iu the long run. There are evi-
dently three main roads from the Mediterranean to
the ocean : a French road from Marseilles to
Havre or Calais, an Austrian road from Trieste to
Hamburg, and an Italian, or Italo-German read,
from Genoa to the Rhine at Basle, down to Cologne,
Antwerp, Ostend, and Rotterdam. There is little
doubt, we think, that a junction of the Ticino with
he Rhine by a railway across the Alps, would be by
far the most important victory of mind over matter
in Continental Europe. A link between Italy and
Germany, and Rhenish France itself, could be esta
blished at no point more favourable. The port of
Genoa is, or may be made, a far better harbour
than either Marseilles or Trieste; in fact, by far the
best commercial harbour all along the coast from
Gibraltar to the Bosphorus. For the whole Orien-
tal trade, for our overland mails, for the trade that
the expected Suez Canal may open to the Western
nations, no highroad can be imagined more conve-
nient than that which strikes up in the shortest
and most immediate direction to the Rhine—that
great artery of all the Gallic no less than of all the