Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science

The "railway" had the start of the locomotive by a couple of centuries, and derives its parentage from the clumsy wooden way-leaves or tram-roads which were laid down to lessen the labour of dragging the coal-waggons to and from the place of shipment in the Newcastle colleries. These were in use from the beginning of the seventeenth century, but it was not till the beginning of the nineteenth that the locomotive steam-engine made its appearance. Watt himself took out a patent for a locomotive in 1784, but nothing came of it; and the honour of having first proved the practicability of applying steam to the purposes of locomotion is due to a Cornishman named Trevithick, who devised a high-pressure engine of very ingenious construction, and actually set it to work on one of the roads in South Wales. At first, therefore, there was no alliance between the engine and the rail; and though afterwards Trevithick adapted it to run on a tram-way, something went wrong with it, and the idea was for the time abandoned. There was a long-headed engine-man in one of the Newcastle collieries about this time, in whose mind the true solution of the problem was rapidly developing, but Trevithick had nearly forestalled him. The stories of these two men afford a most instructive lesson. A man of undoubted talent and ingenuity, with influential friends both in Cornwall and London, Trevithick had a fair start in life, and every opportunity of distinguishing himself. But he lacked steadiness and perseverance, and nothing prospered with him. He had no sooner applied himself to one scheme than he threw it up, and became engrossed in another, to be abandoned in turn for some new favourite. He was always beginning some novelty, and never ending what he had begun, and the consequence was an almost constant succession of failures. He was always unhappy and unsuccessful. If now and then a gleam of success did brighten on his path, it was but temporary, and was speedily absorbed in the gloom of failure. He found a man of capital to take up his high-pressure engine, got his locomotive built and set to work, brought his ballast engine into use, and stood in no want of praise and encouragement; and yet, one after another his schemes went wrong. Not one of them did well, because he never stuck to any of them long enough. "The world always went wrong with him," he said himself. "He always went wrong with the world," said more truly those who knew him. His haste, impatience, and want of perseverance ruined him. After actually witnessing his steam engine at work in Wales, dragging a train of heavy waggons at the rate of five miles an hour, he lost conceit of his invention, went away to the West Indies, and did not return to England till Stephenson had solved the difficulty of steam locomotion, and was laying out the Stockton and Darlington Railway. The humble engine-man, without education, without friends, without money, with countless obstacles in his way, and not a single advantage, save his native genius and resolution, had won the day, and distanced his more favoured and accomplished rival. It was reserved for George Stephenson to bring about the alliance of the locomotive and the railroad – "man and wife," as he used to call them – whose union, like that of heaven and earth in the old mythology, was to bear an offspring of Titanic might – the modern railway.

II. – THE STEPHENSONS: FATHER AND SON

Towards the close of the last century, a bare-legged herd-laddie, about eight years old, might have been seen, in a field at Dewley Burn, a little village not far from Newcastle, amusing himself by making clay-engines, with bits of hemlock-stalk for imaginary pipes. The child is father of the man; and in after years that little fellow became the inventor of the passenger locomotive, and as the founder of the gigantic railway system which now spreads its fibres over the length and breadth, not only of our own country, but of the civilized world, the true hero of the half-century.

The second son of a fireman to one of the colliery engines, who had six children and a wife to support on an income of twelve shillings a-week, George Stephenson had to begin work while quite a child. At first he was set to look after a neighbour's cows, and keep them from straying; and afterwards he was promoted to the work of leading horses at the plough, hoeing turnips, and such like, at a salary of fourpence a-day. The lad had always been fond of poking about in his father's engine house; and his great ambition at this time was to become a fireman like his father. And at length, after being employed in various ways about the colliery, he was, at the age of fourteen, appointed his father's assistant at a shilling a-day. The next year he got a situation as fireman on his own account; and "now," said he, when his wages were advanced to twelve shillings a-week – "now I'm a made man for life."

The next step he took was to get the place of "plugman" to the same engine that his father attended as fireman, the former post being rather the higher of the two. The business of the plugman, the uninitiated may be informed, is to watch the engine, and see that it works properly – the name being derived from the duty of plugging the tube at the bottom of the shaft, so that the action of the pump should not be interfered with by the exposure of the suction-holes. George now devoted himself enthusiastically to the study of the engine under his care. It became a sort of pet with him; and he was never weary of taking it to pieces, cleaning it, putting it together again, and inspecting its various parts with admiration and delight, so that he soon made himself thoroughly master of its method of working and construction.

Eighteen years old by this time, George Stephenson was wholly uneducated. His father's small earnings, and the large family he had to feed, at a time when provisions were scarce and at war prices, prevented his having any schooling in his early years; and he now set himself to repair his deficiencies in that respect. His duties occupied him twelve hours a-day, so that he had but little leisure to himself; but he was bent on improving himself, and after the duties of the day were over, went to a night-school kept by a poor teacher in the village of Water-row, where he was now situated, on three nights during the week, to take lessons in reading and spelling, and afterwards in the science of pot-hooks and hangers as well; so that by the time he was nineteen he was able to read clearly, and to write his own name. Then he took to arithmetic, for which he showed a strong predilection. He had always a sum or two by him to work out while at the engine side, and soon made great progress.

The next year he was appointed brakesman at Black Collerton Colliery, with six shillings added to his wages, which were now nearly a pound a-week, and he was always making a few shillings extra by mending his fellow-workmen's shoes, a job at which he was rather expert. Busy as he was with his various tasks, he found time to fall in love. Pretty Fanny Henderson, a servant at a neighbouring farm, caught his fancy; and getting her shoes to mend, it cost him a great effort to return them to the comely owner after they were patched up. He carried them about with him in his pocket for some time, and would pull them out, and then gaze fondly at them with as much emotion as the old story tells us the sight of the dainty glass slipper, which Cinderella dropped at the ball, excited in the breast of the young prince. Bent upon taking up house for himself, with Fanny as presiding genius, Stephenson now began to save up, and declared himself a "rich man" when he put his first guinea in the box.

Instead of spending the Saturday afternoon with his fellow-workmen in the public-house, Stephenson employed himself in taking the engine to pieces, and cleaning it; but besides his attention to work, he was also remarkable for his skill at putting and wrestling, in which he beat most of his comrades. And he was not without pluck either, as he let a great hulking fellow, who was the bully of the village, know to his cost, by giving him such a drubbing as made him a "sadder and wiser man" for some time afterwards. He still continued his attendance at the night-school, till he had got out of the master as much instruction in arithmetic as he was able to supply.

By the time he was of age he had saved up enough to take a little cottage and furnish it comfortably, though, of course, very humbly; and in the winter of 1802, Fanny, now Mrs. George Stephenson, rode home from church on horseback, seated on a pillion behind her husband, with her arms round his waist; and very proud and happy, we may be sure, he was that day, as the neighbours came to their doors to wish him "God speed" in his new mode of life.

Having learned all he could from the village teacher, George Stephenson now began to study mensuration and mathematics at home by himself; but he also found time to make a number of experiments in the hope of finding out the secret of perpetual motion, and to make shoe-lasts and shoes, as well as mend them. At the end of 1803 his only son, Robert, was born; and soon after the family removed to Killingworth, seven miles from Newcastle, where George got the place of brakesman. They had not been settled long here when Fanny died – a loss which affected George deeply, and attached him all the more intensely to the offspring of their union. At this time everything seemed to go wrong with him. As if his wife's death was not grief enough, his father met with an accident which deprived him of his eye-sight, and shattered his frame; George himself was drawn for the militia, and had to pay a heavy sum of money for a substitute; and with his father, and mother, and his own boy to support, at a time when taxes were excessive and food dear, he had only a salary of £50 or £60 a-year to meet all claims. He was on the verge of despair, and would have emigrated to America, if, fortunately for our country, he had not been unable to raise sufficient money for his passage. So he had to stay in the old country, where a bright and glorious future awaited him, dark and desperate as the prospect then appeared.

He still went on making models and experiments, and perfecting his knowledge of his own engine. To add to his earnings he also took to clock-cleaning, with the view of saving up enough to give his boy the best education it was in his power to bestow. "In the earlier period of my career," he used afterwards to say, "when Robert was a little boy, I saw how deficient I was in education, and I made up my mind that he should not labour under the same defect, but that I would put him to a good school, and give him a liberal training. I was, however, a poor man, and how do you think I managed? I betook myself to mending my neighbours' clocks and watches at nights, after my daily labour was done, and thus I procured the means of educating my son." George began by teaching his son to work with him; and when the little chap could not reach so high as to put a clock-hand on, would set him on a chair for the purpose, and very proud Robert was whenever he could "help father" in any of his jobs.

About this time a new pit having been sunk in the district where he worked, the engine fixed for the purpose of pumping the water out of the shaft was found a failure. This soon reached George's ears. He walked over to the pit, carefully examined the various parts of the machinery, and turned the matter over in his mind. One day when he was looking at it, and almost convinced that he had discovered the cause of the failure, one of the workmen came up, and asked him if he could tell what was wrong.

"Yes," said George; "and I think I could alter it, and in a week's time send you to the bottom."

George offered his services to the engineer. Every expedient had been tried to repair the engine, and all had failed. There could be no harm, if no good, in Stephenson trying his hand at it. So he got leave, and set to work. He took the engine entirely to pieces, and in four days had repaired it thoroughly, so that the workmen could get to the bottom and proceed with their labours. George Stephenson's skill as an engine-doctor began to be noised abroad, and secured him the post of engine-wright at Killingworth, with a salary of £100 a-year. Robert was now old enough to go to school, and was sent to one in Newcastle, to which, dressed in a suit of coarse grey stuff cut out by his father, he rode every day upon a donkey. Robert spent much of his spare time in the Literary and Philosophical Institute of Newcastle; and would sometimes take home a volume from the library, which father and son would eagerly peruse together. Occasionally they tried chemical experiments together; and now and then Robert would try his hand by himself. On one occasion he electrified the cows in an adjacent enclosure by means of an electric kite, making the bewildered animals dash madly about the field, with their tails erect on end; and another time he administered a severe electric shock to his father's Galloway pony, which nearly knocked it over, and drew down upon him the affected wrath of his father, who, coming out at the instant, shook his whip at him and called him a mischievous scoundrel, though pleased all the while at the lad's ingenuity and enterprise. As an early proof of the former, there still stands over the cottage door at Killingworth a sun-dial, constructed by Robert when he was thirteen years old, with some little help from his father.

The idea of constructing a steam-engine to run on the colliery tram-roads leading to the shipping-place was now receiving considerable attention from the engineering community. Several schemes had been propounded, and engines actually made; but none of them had been brought into use. A mistaken notion prevailed that the plain round wheels of an engine would slip round without catching hold of the rails, and that thus no progress would be made; but George Stephenson soon became convinced that the weight of the engine would of itself be sufficient to press the wheels to the rails, so that they could not fail to bite. He turned the subject over and over in his mind, tested his conceptions by countless experiments, and at length completed his scheme. Money for the construction of a locomotive engine on his plan having been supplied by Lord Ravensworth, one was made after many difficulties, and placed upon the tram-road at Killingworth, where it drew a load of 30 tons up a somewhat steep gradient at the rate of four miles an hour. Still there was very little saving in cost, and little advance in speed as compared with horse-power; but in a second one, which Stephenson quickly set about constructing, he turned the waste steam into the chimney to increase the draught, and thus puff the fuel into a brisker flame, and create a larger volume of steam to propel the locomotive. The fundamental principles of the engine thus formed remain in operation to this day; and it may in truth be termed the progenitor of the great locomotive family.

In 1821 George Stephenson got the appointment of engineer, with £300 of salary, to the Stockton and Darlington Railway Company, in the Act of Parliament for which power was given to use locomotive engines, if needful, either for the conveyance of goods or passengers. When the line was opened, it was worked partly by horses and partly by locomotive and stationary engines. This led to a partnership between Mr. Edward Pease of Darlington, the chief projector of the line, and Stephenson, in a locomotive manufactory in Newcastle, – for many years the only one of the kind in existence.

Meanwhile, young Robert Stephenson, having spent a year or two in gaining a practical acquaintance with the machinery and working of a colliery, went to the University of Edinburgh, where he spent a session in attending the courses of lectures on chemistry, natural philosophy, and geology. He made the best of his opportunities; and that he might profit to the utmost by the lectures, he studied short-hand, and took them all down verbatim, transcribing his notes every evening before he went to bed. Robert brought home the prize for mathematics, and showed he had made so much progress at college that, though the £80 which the session cost was a large sum to his father at that time, George never failed, then or afterwards, to declare that it was one of the best investments he had ever made.

After a year or two in his father's locomotive factory, Robert spent two or three years in charge of the machinery of a mining company in Columbia, and returned to England at the close of 1827, to find the great question, "Whether locomotives can be successfully and profitably applied to passenger traffic?" hotly agitated, his father, almost alone, taking the side of the travelling, against that of the fixed engines, and insisting that the wheel and the rail were clearly and closely part of one system.

The success of the Darlington line induced the Liverpool merchants to project a line between that town and Manchester; and George Stephenson was almost unanimously chosen engineer, though it was still undetermined whether the new line should be worked by steam or horse power. But, apart from that question, a great, and, as it appeared to most of the engineers of the time, an insurmountable difficulty existed in the quagmire of Chat Moss, – an enormous mass of watery pulp, which rose in height in wet, and sank in dry weather like a sponge, and over whose treacherous depths it was pronounced impossible to form a firm road. It was perfect madness to think of such a thing, said the engineers, and none of them would support Stephenson's scheme; but he resolved to see what could be done. Truck-load after truck-load of stuff was emptied into the moss, and still the insatiable bog kept gaping as though it had not had half a feed. The directors, alarmed, would have abandoned the project, had they not been so deeply involved that they were obliged to let Stephenson continue. But he never doubted himself – not for a moment. He only pushed on the works more vigorously; and, before six months were over, the directors found themselves whirling along over the very bog they expected all their capital was to be fruitlessly sunk to the bottom of. Still, no decision had been come to as to whether locomotive or fixed engines were to be adopted; and the Stephensons were still battling bravely in favour of the locomotive against a host of opponents. Robert did his father good service by the able and pithy pamphlets which he wrote on the subject; and at length their perseverance was rewarded by the directors consenting to employ a locomotive, if they could get one that would run at the rate of ten miles an hour, and not weigh more than six tons, including tender; and offering a reward of £500 for the best engine fulfilling these conditions. George Stephenson and his son set to work immediately, and the product of their united skill and ingenuity was the celebrated Rocket, which carried off the prize, and attained a speed of twenty-nine miles on the opening day. The practicability and success of the locomotive was now beyond a doubt; from that day forward public opinion began to turn. Of course, for many a long year afterwards there were not wanting numbers of bigoted men of the old school who cried down the new-fangled system, and would hear of no means of transit but the stage-coach and the canal-boat. But shrewd folk, like the old Duke of Bridgewater, whose faculties were sharpened by their pockets being in danger, could not help crying out, "There's mischief in these tram-ways! I wish the canals mayn't suffer;" and, within ten years of the day when the Rocket went puffing triumphantly along the Liverpool and Manchester line, most sensible people had become convinced of the importance of the locomotive railway, and scarcely a principal town in the country but was supplied with a line.

The Stephensons had fought a hard fight for their protegé, "rail and wheel," and now they were to reap the fruits of their enterprise and foresight. To nearly all the most important of the new lines George Stephenson acted as engineer; and thus, in the course of two years, above 321 miles of railway were constructed under his superintendence, at a cost of £11,000,000 sterling. Robert at first left his father to attend to the laying out of railways, and directed his attention to the improvement of the locomotive in all its details, experimenting incessantly, and trying now one new device, now another. "It was astonishing," says Mr. Smiles, "to observe the rapidity of the improvements effected, – every engine turned out of Stephenson's workshops exhibiting an advance upon its predecessor in point of speed, power, and working efficiency.

By this time George had taken up his residence at Tapton House, near Chesterfield, where he continued to reside for the remainder of his life. Close by were some extensive coal-pits, which he had taken in lease, and from which he supplied London with the first coals sent by railway. He was now a man of wealth and fame, known and honoured throughout his own country, and in many foreign ones, and blessed with many a staunch, true friend. More than once he was offered knighthood by Sir Robert Peel, but declined the honour. As he grew up in years, he gradually abandoned his railway business to the charge of his son, and settled down into a quiet country gentleman of agricultural tastes. He was very fond of gardening and farming, and spent many a long day superintending the operations in the fields. When a boy, he had always been very fond of taming birds and rabbits, and had once had flocks of robins, which, in the hard winter, used to come hopping round his feet for crumbs. And now, in his old age, he had special pets among his dogs and horses, and was proud of his superior breed of rabbits. There was scarcely a nest on his estate that he was not acquainted with; and he used to go round from day to day to look at them, and see that they were kept uninjured.

The year before his death he visited Sir Robert Peel at Drayton Manor. Dr. Buckland, the geologist, was of the party. One Sunday, as they were returning from church, they observed a train speeding along the valley in the distance.

"Now, Buckland," said Mr. Stephenson, "I have a poser for you. Can you tell me what is the power that is driving that train?"

"Well," said the other, "I suppose it is one of your big engines."

"But what drives the engine?"

"Oh, very likely a canny Newcastle driver."

"What do you say to the light of the sun?"

"How can that be?" asked the professor.

"It is nothing else," said the engineer. "It is light bottled up in the earth for tens of thousands of years – light, absorbed by plants and vegetables, being necessary for the condensation of carbon during the process of their growth, if it be not carbon in another form; and now, after being buried in the earth for long ages in fields of coal, that latent light is again brought forth and liberated, made to work as in that locomotive, for great human purposes."

On the 12th of August 1848, this great, good man – one of the truest heroes that ever lived, and one of the greatest benefactors of our country – passed from among us, leaving his son, Robert, to develop and extend the great work of which he had laid the foundation.

Among one of the first railways of any extent of which Robert Stephenson had the laying out, was the London and Birmingham; and it is related, as an illustration of his conscientious perseverance in executing the task, that in the course of the examination of the country he walked over the whole of the intervening districts upwards of twenty times. Many other lines, in England and abroad, were executed by him in rapid succession; and it was stated a few years ago, that the lines of railway constructed under his superintendence had involved an outlay of £70,000,000 sterling.

The three great works, however, with which his name will always be most intimately associated, and which are the grandest monuments of his genius, are the High Level Bridge at Newcastle, the Britannia Bridge across the Menai Straits, and the Victoria Bridge across the St. Lawrence at Montreal. The first two are sufficiently well known – the one springing across the valley of the Tyne, between the busy towns of Newcastle and Gateshead; the other spanning, in mid air, a wide arm of the sea, at such a height that vessels of large burden in full sail can pass beneath. The third great effort of Robert Stephenson's prolific brain he did not live to see the completion of. The Victoria Bridge at Montreal is constructed on the same principle as the Britannia Bridge, but on a much larger scale. "The Victoria Bridge," says Mr. Smiles, "with its approaches, is only sixty yards short of two miles in length. In its gigantic strength and majestic proportions, there is no structure to compare with it in ancient or modern times. It consists of not less than twenty-five immense tubular bridges joined into one; the great central span being 332 feet, the others, 242 feet in length. The weight of the wrought iron on the bridge is about 10,000 tons, and the piers are of massive stone, containing some 8000 tons each of solid masonry."

After the completion of the Britannia Bridge, and again after the opening of the High Level Bridge, Robert Stephenson was offered the honour of knighthood, which, like his father before him, he respectfully declined. In 1857 he received the title of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford; and for many years before his death he represented Whitby in Parliament. He was passionately fond of yachting, and almost immediately after a trip to Norway in the summer of 1859, he was seized with a mortal illness, and died in the beginning of October. On the 14th October he was buried in Westminster, amongst the illustrious dead of England.

No man could be more beloved than Robert Stephenson was by a wide circle of friends, and none better deserved it. "In society," writes one who had opportunities of intercourse with him, "he was simply charming and fascinating in the highest degree, from his natural goodness of heart and the genial zest with which he relished life himself and participated its enjoyment with others. He was generous and even princely in his expenditure – not upon himself, but on his friends. On board the Titania, or at his house in Gloucester Square, his frequent and numerous guests found his splendid resources at all times converted to their gratification with a grace of hospitality which, although sedulous, was never oppressive. There was nothing of the patron in his manner, or of the Olympic condescension which is sometimes affected by much lesser men. A friend (and how many friends he had!) was at once his equal, and treated with republican freedom, yet with the most high-bred courtesy and happy considerateness… His payment of half the debt of £6000, which weighed like an incubus on an institution at Newcastle, is generally known; but his private charities were as boundless as his nature was generous, and as quietly performed as that nature was unostentatious. Such, then, was Robert Stephenson, as complete a character in the multifarious relations of life as probably any man has met or will meet in the course of his experience. Not unlike, or rather exceedingly like, his father in some respects, especially in the easy, unimposing manner in which he went about his life's work, he was hardly to be accounted his father's inferior, except perhaps in the heroic quality of combativeness. Father and son, independently of each other, and both in conjunction, have left grand and beneficent results to posterity, and both recall to us Monckton Milnes's men of old, who

"'Went about their gravest tasks
Like noble boys at play.'"

III. – THE GROWTH OF RAILWAYS

It was about the year 1818 that Thomas Gray of Nottingham, travelling in the north of England, happened to visit one of the collieries. As he stood watching a train of loaded waggons being propelled by steam along the tram-road which led from the mouth of the pit to the wharf where the coals were shipped, the idea flashed through his mind that the same system was applicable to the ordinary purposes of locomotion.

"Why!" he exclaimed to the engineer who was showing him over the place, – "why are there not tram-roads laid down all over England so as to supersede our common roads, and steam engines employed to drag waggons full of goods, and carriages full of passengers along them, instead of horse-power?"

"Propose that to the nation," replied his companion, "and see what you will get by it. Why, sir, you would be worried to death for your pains."

Gray was not to be balked, however. The idea took firm possession of his mind, and became the one great subject of his thoughts and conversation. He talked about it to everybody whom he met, and who had patience to listen to him, wrote letters and memorials to public men, and afterwards appealed to the people at large. He was laughed at as a whimsical, crochetty fellow, and no one gave any serious attention to his views. Mr. Jones of Gromford Manor, and Mr. Pease of Darlington, also distinguished themselves by their agitation in favour of railways, at a time when they were regarded with suspicion and alarm. The growing trade of Liverpool and Manchester, and other large towns, however, spoke more imperatively and forcibly in favour of the new project than any amount of individual agitation. The means of communication between the various manufacturing towns had fallen far behind their wants; and it was at length felt that some new system must be adopted. The railroad and the locomotive got a trial; and before long the carriers' carts and the stage coaches were driven off the road for want of custom, although the conveyance of goods and passengers throughout the country went on multiplying an hundred-fold. One can fancy the astonishment and awe with which the country-folk watched the progress of the first railway train through their peaceful acres, – how old and young left their work and rushed out to see the marvellous spectacle, – how the "oldest inhabitants" shook their heads, and muttered about changed times, – how the horses in the field trembled with fear, and threw up their heels at their iron rival as it went snorting past – a strange, iron monster, the handicraft of man, able to drag the heaviest burdens, and yet outstrip Flying Childers or Eclipse, as fresh at the end of a journey as at the beginning, and never to be tired out by any toil, if only kept in meat and drink. Just as in the days of Charles the First, honest, short-sighted folk prophesied the ruin of the empire and a judgment upon the use of coaches, and bewailed the misfortunes of the hundreds of able-bodied men who would be thrown out of employment; so in the early days of the railroad, great fears were entertained that the horses' occupation would be gone, and that the noble breed would quickly become extinct. There was no measure to the lamentations over the ruin of that great institution of English life – the stage-coach, with its gallant driver and guard, and spanking team.

The extension of the railway system is one of the wonders of our time. The few score miles of railroad planted in 1825 have put forth offshoots and branches, till now a mighty net-work of some ten thousand miles in all, is spread over the three kingdoms, with many fresh shoots in bud. Up to the end of 1834, when not a hundred miles of railway were open, the annual average of travellers by coach was some six millions a year; ten years afterwards there were more than four times that number, and to-day the annual average is more than a hundred millions! The number of persons employed upon the working railroads of the United Kingdom amount to about one hundred and thirty thousand, while nearly half as many find employment in the construction of new lines.

A few facts, stated by the late Mr. Robert Stephenson, illustrate in a very striking manner the gigantic proportion of the railway system of Great Britain: – The railway has pierced the earth with tunnels to the extent of more than fifty miles, and there are about twelve miles of viaducts in the vicinity of London alone. The earthworks which have been thrown up would measure 550,000,000 cubic yards, beside which St. Paul's would shrink to a pigmy, for it would form a pyramid a mile and a half high, with a base larger than the whole of St. James's Park. Every moment four tons of coal flashes into steam twenty tons of water – as much water as would suffice to supply the domestic and other wants of a town the size of Liverpool, and as much coal as equals half the consumption of the metropolis. The wear and tear is so great that twenty thousand tons of iron have to be replaced annually, and three hundred thousand trees, or as much as five thousand acres could produce, have to be felled for sleepers.

When George Stephenson was planning the Liverpool and Manchester line, the directors entreated him, when they went to Parliament, not to talk of going at a faster rate than ten miles an hour, or he "would put a cross on the concern." George was sanguine, however, and spoke of fifteen miles an hour, to the astonishment of the committee, who began to think him crazy. The average speed is now twenty-five miles an hour, and a mile a minute can be done, if need be. The wind is hard pushed to keep ahead of a good engine at its fullest speed.[3 - The wind is calculated to travel at the rate of eighty-two feet in a second; the pace of a steam-engine, at the rate of sixty miles an hour, would be rather more.] The express trains on the "broad gauge" of the Great Western travel at the rate of fifty-one miles an hour, or forty-three, including stoppages. To attain this rate, a speed of sixty miles an hour is adopted midway between some of the stations, and even seventy miles an hour have been reached in certain experimental trips. The engines on this line can draw a passenger-train weighing one hundred and twenty tons at a speed of sixty miles an hour, the engine and tender themselves weighing an additional fifty-two tons. The ordinary luggage-trains weigh some six hundred tons each. The locomotive, however, goes on the principle that the labourer is worthy of his hire; if it works hard, it eats voraciously. At ordinary mail speed the engine consumes about twenty lbs. of coke per mile; so that, costing £2500 to begin with, and spending an allowance of £2000 a year – as much as an under-secretary of state – the locomotive is rather an extravagant customer – only, it works very hard for the money, and earns it over and over again. With all its strength and size, the locomotive is a much more delicate concern than would be supposed; the 5416 different pieces of which it is composed must be put together as carefully as a watch, and, though guaranteed to go two years without a doctor, exacts the most devoted attention from its guardians to keep it in order.

It would fill a volume of huge dimensions to dilate on all the phases of the social revolution which the modern railway has wrought in our own and other countries; how it is daily annihilating time and space, and making the Land's End and John o'Groat's House next door neighbours; rubbing down old prejudices and jealousies, both national and provincial, promoting commerce, developing manufacture, transforming poor little villages into flourishing towns, and industrious towns into mighty cities; carrying civilization into the heart of the jungle and the desert, and, with its twin-brother, the steam-ship, joining hands and hearts in peace and amity all the world over. After the wonders of the last thirty years, who can doubt that our children, at the close of the century, will regard us as little less backward than we now do our fathers at its dawn?

The Lighthouse

"Far in the bosom of the deep,
O'er these wild shelves my watch I keep:
A ruddy gleam of changeful light,
Bound on the dusky brow of night;
The seaman bids my lustre hail,
And scorns to strike his timorous sail." – Scott.

I. – THE EDDYSTONE