confession is the weight of words very much depends, namely, a great name and glibness of speech.

The bill was speedily introduced again; but it was not deemed wise to venture a second time on Stephenson as a witness, and his place was supplied by engineers and surveyors of the highest reputation. The route was slightly changed to avoid game preserves, and other means were adopted to conciliate opponents. The bill passed; and Stephenson was appointed engineer, at a salary of £1,000 a year. The work involved the peculiar difficulty arising from Chat Moss, a bog four miles across. The engineer had no experience to guide him; public opinion predicted utter failure; "for weeks and weeks" he went on pouring materials into the insatiable bog without the least sign of being able to raise the solid embankment one single inch; his assistants were fast losing all hope; the directors began to speak of the task as impracticable; other engineers were consulted, and they reported unfavourably; a board meeting was called to consider whether the work should be abandoned; fortunately, the indomitable engine-wright of Killingworth never for one moment doubted the issue, and six months after that board meeting, he took a party of the directors' friends over the Moss by a locomotive, on their way to dine at Manchester. Kilsby Tunnel, less than a mile and a half in length, cost £350,000: the cost of the four miles over Chat Moss was £28,000.

When the line was approaching completion, it was necessary to determine what motive power should be employed upon it. To us, now, it must appear marvellous and almost astounding, that after the experience which has been explained, there should have existed the slightest doubt. There did exist the greatest doubt. Telford and the Rennies discountenanced the locomotive; and the directors, deluged with all sorts of plans, called in two professional engineers of high standing, Mr. Walker of Limehouse, and Mr. Rastrick of Stourbridge. These gentlemen examined the Northern railways, and then concurred in recommending the use of fixed engines in preference to locomotives. George Stephenson stood alone. Not a single professional man of any eminence countenanced him; but, firmer than the pillars of Staffa amid the swell of the Atlantic, he held fast his confidence; pointed out to the directors the prodigious disadvantages of working so long a line by fixed engines; challenged them to let him produce an engine for the purpose of trial, pledging himself that it should work heavy goods along the line with speed, regularity, and safety. Swayed by his resoluteness, they offered a prize of £500 for a locomotive which should best fulfil certain con

ditions, be ready not later than October 1st, 1829, and not exceed £550 in price. The trial commenced on the 6th, and was not concluded till the 14th. Four engines started, one of them being the "Rocket" from Stephenson's manufactory at Newcastle. The other three, from different causes, failed. The "Rocket" drew its appointed load at an average speed of fifteen miles an hour, ten being the speed required; and when the prize had been adjudged, Stephenson ordered it to be brought out and disengaged from its load of twenty tons, and to the admiration, if not awe, of the spectators, it made two trips at the rate of thirty-five miles an hour. The shares of the company immediately rose ten per cent. The grand triumph of the age was won.

The sublime invention which is changing the aspect of the whole world, owes its existence, progress, and perfection entirely to voluntary effort, and chiefly to individual energy. Government, from first to last, did nothing to develope, but much to obstruct, an enterprise which might have seemed, beyond almost any other, to justify and require the interference of the state. So early as 1812, Stephenson produced his first engine, and remarked to his friends that "there was no limit to the speed of such an engine, if the works could be made to stand it." For the following seventeen years, instead of seeing the worth of this mighty instrument and fostering the invention, government had to be fought, and conquered or bribed, at every step. So late as 1825, Stephenson appeared before a committee of the House of Commons; told them that he had laid down or superintended six railways, improved three others, and constructed fifty-five engines, of which sixteen were locomotives; that his locomotives had been at work eleven years, and had exceeded his most sanguine expectations; that twenty tons might be drawn eight miles, and forty tons four miles an hour; that indeed he had no doubt they might go at the rate of twelve miles an hour; but the testimony of this man was overborne by the vague assertions of theorists, the babbling of conceited advocates, and the covetousness of senatorial landowners. The following year the bill was again brought forward, and after its promoters had expended £27,000, leave was granted, or rather extorted, to make a railroad from Liverpool to Manchester. During the progress of the works, application was made to government for monetary aid. Telford was consulted, and replied that he did not know whether either fixed engines or locomotives would answer, and though both had answered for fifteen years, the aid was refused. After the all-decisive experiment of 1829, the government was directing its attention to the improvement of the old

turnpike roads, and voting large sums of money to reward Mr. MacAdam. In 1832, a bill was presented to Parliament for a line from Birmingham to London. It passed the Commons. The sum of £10,000 was asked as the price of withdrawing one part of the opposition to which it was exposed in the Lords; in short, the opposition had been got up for the purpose of being bought off. The bribe was refused, and the bill rejected. The directors, however, found that if they would succeed with noble lords, they must pay. The estimate, therefore, of money for land, which was £250,000 in the first bill, was raised to £750,000 in the second; and then the patriotic senators suffered the bill to become law; but not till £72,868 had been consumed in parliamentary expenses. Such is governmental patronage of the greatest national works. Mr. Stephenson was accustomed to attribute his success in life mainly, if not entirely, to one quality, perseverance. "He never would have it that he was a genius, or that he had done anything which other men, equally laborious and persevering with himself, could not have accomplished." The same notion appears repeatedly in the pages of the biography, and is much more to the credit of Mr. Stephenson's modesty than of his judgment. Unquestionably the miseries of society are to be traced chiefly to the want of two virtues, which it is in every man's power to practise, thrift and perseverance. It cannot be too sedulously impressed upon young men, that if they have health, and will but be steadfast and economical, they are absolutely certain of success. Let them banish the word "luck" from their vocabulary; and set out in life as faithful disciples of Solomon, who says, "the hand of the diligent maketh rich;" "seest thou a man diligent in his business, he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men." But when an authority like Stephenson conveys the impression that almost any man is competent to do what he did, he is betrayed into gross and not harmless exaggeration. There is as much ditference between man and man, as between the Shetland pony and the London dray-horse, as between the Suffolk cart-horse and the winner of "the Derby." It is only here and there a man that can bear a staff "like a weaver's beam." To tell the multitude they may do all a giant docs if they will, is but to mislead and dishearten them. Their powers are limited. To be diligent and faithful within the limits assigned them, is the whole of their duty; and to that duty they are not at all schooled, by being encouraged to imitate the frog in the fable. Sebastian Bach might say, "I was industrious, and whoever is equally industrious will be equally successful;" but the assumption that every man has the capacity to produce the music of

Bach, or the dramas of Shakspere, or the engineering feats of Stephenson, is simply absurd; and can but delude those who are weak enough to be flattered by it. A moderate amount only of mental capacity is possessed by men generally. In their own sphere, they may be happy, useful, loved, honoured of God, educated for the highest honours of the kingdom of Christ, which will be meted out according to moral excellence; but they ought not to be told it is their own fault if they are not as tall as the son of Kish, or as strong as the son of Manoah.

George Stephenson, though a very modest man, unwittingly attributed far too much to himself, when he resolved his achievements into his own industry and perseverance. He possessed unusual bodily strength and endurance, and mentally he belonged to the class which are both shrewd and powerful beyond their fellows. Hearing some one read from a newspaper a description of the Egyptian mode of hatching eggs, he tried the experiment with birds' eggs by his engine fire. When a man grown, he acquired the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic; mastered reduction while his comrade was wearying himself with the mysteries of simple division; and eventually outstripped his teacher. He tried his hand at perpetual motion; when his clock had been injured by fire, he took it to pieces, and repaired it, and so acquired a new and profitable business. From the difficulties created by the war, his enterprising spirit suggested an escape by emigration, and he was kept in England only by having spent his savings on his needy parents. He had a small garden, and no finer leeks or cabbages were to be found in the neighbourhood than there. In after life, he bore away the prize for pines from his friend Paxton, and for grapes in a competition with all England. The cucumbers, indeed, for a time baffled all the efforts of the engineer to make them grow straight, but at length he hit upon the plan of having glass cylinders made for them to grow in, and carrying one of the first successful specimens to his visitors, he exclaimed, "I think I have bothered them noo." He was a man qualified corporeally, mentally, and morally, to be foremost in the race of life.

Railroads will be ever associated in English history with some of the most discreditable tricks ever practised. It is greatly to Mr. Stephenson's honour that, while connected more closely than any other man with their construction and working, he answervingly kept in the pathway of integrity and honour. His engines were thoroughly well made; and in the formation. of new roads he took care to have good materials, and good workmanship, and would tolerate no "scamping." In the wild excitement of 1844 and 1845, he never speculated in shares, and did his best to convince all-and they were very many-who

endeavoured in vain to secure his sanction as engineer of worthless lines, of the ruinous consequences of their procedure.

As far as the memoir supplies any evidence in point, it presents Stephenson to us as an amiable child, a good son, a kind husband, an affectionate and wise father. Gladly should we have learned more than is revealed of his character religiously considered. When the head viewer went to ask him about the engine which failed to pump the water from the pit at Killingworth, he was dressed in his Sunday's suit, about to proceed to "the preachings" in the Methodist chapel, which at that time he attended. In later years,

"Whilst walking in the woods or through the grounds, he would arrest his friends' attention by allusion to some simple object, such as a leaf, a blade of grass, a bit of bark, a nest of birds, or an ant carrying its eggs across a path,-and descant in glowing terms upon the creative power of the Divine mechanician, whose contrivances were so exhaustless and so wonderful. This was a theme upon which he was often accustomed to dwell in reverential admiration, when in the society of his more intimate friends.

One night, when walking under the stars, and gazing up into the field of suns, each the probable centre of a system, forming the Milky Way, a friend said to him, 'What an insignificant creature is man, in sight of so immense a creation as that.' 'Yes,' was his reply, but how wonderful a creature also is man, to be able to think and reason, and even in some measure to comprehend works so infinite!'"

With these exceptions, there is scarcely a reference to be found to the religious views or practices of this distinguished man. The slight incidental evidence which the history supplies, is certainly not such as a pious man would desire. At page 357, a brief journal is given, extending from August 4th, 1836, to September 10th. We extract the only Sunday entries it contains:

"August 14th. Meeting with Mr. Hudson at York, and journey from York to Newcastle." "21st. Carlisle to Dumfries by mail, forward to Ayr by chaise, proceeding up the valley of the Nith, through Thornhill, Sanquhar, and Cumnock." 28th. Journey from Edinburgh, through Melrose and Jedburgh to Horsley, along the route of Mr. Richardson's proposed railway, across Carter Fell." "September 4th. Sunday at Manchester."

Earnestly have we looked at the tale of his advancing life till in his 67th year he gave up the ghost, in quest of some intimations that he knew Him who is "the way, the truth, and the life," and that his great soul thrilled with the thought of eternity, and of that state amid the stupendous realities of which the