"Pierced the future, far as human eye could see,
Seen the vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be,"
were to come forth and tell them, that before two centuries were over men would think far less of travelling from Oxford to London in one hour than they then did of doing so in a day, by means of a machine of iron, mounted upon wheels, which should rush along the ground, and drag a load, which a hundred horses could not move, as though it were a feather. Roger Bacon had prophesied as much four centuries before; the Marquis of Worcester was propounding the same theory at that very day, and yet who can blame them if they treated the notion as the falsehood of an impostor, or the hallucination of a lunatic?
In these days when railways traverse the country in every direction, and are still multiplying rapidly, when no two towns of the least size and consideration are unprovided with this mode of mutual communication—when we step into a railway carriage as readily as into an omnibus, and breakfasting comfortably in London, are whisked off to Edinburgh, almost in time for the fashionable dinner hour,—it requires no little effort to realize the incredulity and contempt with which the idea of superseding the stage-coach by the steam locomotive, and having lines of iron railways instead of the common highways, was regarded for many years after the beginning of the present century. Even after the practicability of the project had been proved, and steam-engines had been seen puffing along the rails, with a train of carriages attached, even so late as 1825, we find one of the leading periodicals—the Quarterly Review—denouncing the gross exaggeration of the powers of the locomotive which its promoters were guilty of, and predicting that though it might delude for a time, it must end in the mortification of all concerned. The fact was, said the writer, that people would as soon suffer themselves to be fired off like a Congreve rocket, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate—the rate of eighteen miles an hour, which people now-a-days, accustomed to dash along in express trains at two or three times that speed, would deem a perfect snail-pace.
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.