The rest is all but leather or prunello.—Pope.”
ENGINEERS AND MECHANICIANS.
“No man can look back on the last twenty or thirty years without feeling that it has been the age of Engineers and Mechanicians. The profession has, in that period of time, done much to change the aspect of human affairs; for what agency during that period, single or combined, can be compared in its effects, or in its tendency towards the amelioration of the condition of mankind, with the establishment of railroads, of the electric telegraph, and to the improvement in steam navigation?”
“The wide range of the profession of an Engineer requires the assistance of many departments of science and art, and must call into employment important branches of manufacture. He can perform no great work without the aid of a great variety of workmen; and it is on their strength and skill, as well as on their scientific direction, that the perfection of his work will depend. The personal experience of one individual cannot fit him for the exigencies of a profession which is ever extending its range of subjects, and is constantly dealing with new and complex phenomena,—phenomena which are all the more difficult to deal with from the fact, that they are generally surrounded by such variable circumstances as render them incapable of being submitted to precise measurement and calculation, or of being made amenable to the deductions of exact science. Consequently, nothing is more certain than that he who wishes to reach the perfection of his art must avail himself of the experience of others as well as his own, and that he will not unfrequently find the sum of the whole little enough to guide him. And let no inventive genius suppose that his own tendencies or capabilities relieve him from this necessity.
“There is no such thing as discovery and invention, in the sense which is sometimes attached to the words. Men do not suddenly discover new worlds, or invent new machines, or find new metals. Some indeed may be, and are, better fitted than others for such purposes; but the progress of discovery is, and always has been, much the same. There is nothing really worth having that man has obtained that has not been the result of a combined and gradual progress of investigation. A gifted individual comes across some old footmark, and stumbles on a chain of previous research and inquiry. He meets, for instance, with a machine, the result of much previous labour; he modifies it, pulls it to pieces, constructs and reconstructs it, and, by further trial and experiment, he arrives at the long-sought-for result.”
Such were the emphatic words of Mr. Hawkshaw, F.R.S., in opening his Address on his election as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, session 1861-62. It would not be difficult to illustrate the President’s data by many bright instances of their truth. But we remember too well the sad story of Myddleton bringing the New River to our metropolis, a very early engineering labour, who, although he died not so poor as is usually represented, yet his family fell into decay. Almost equally familiar is the story of the life of George Stephenson, the maturer of the locomotive engine; and the career of his son, Robert Stephenson, the constructor of the London and Birmingham Railway, and second only to his father as a railway engineer. George learned to read and write at night-schools, and “figuring” by the engine-fires. As Robert grew up, his father was enabled to send him to Edinburgh University, where he acquired some knowledge in mathematics and geology: these acquisitions afforded subjects for comment and discussion between him and his father, and were of valuable use to both in their future joint avocations; and when the father had retired, in the sphere of railways Robert was recognised as the foremost man, the safest guide, and the most active worker. In the great railway mania of 1844, he was engineer for thirty-three new schemes; and his income was large, beyond any previous instance of engineering gain. His other great railway achievements were, the High-level Bridge at Newcastle; the Chester and Holyhead line; he constructed the Britannia and Conway tubular bridges, and designed the tubular bridges for Canada and Egypt. These intense labours brought him to his grave in his fifty-sixth year. It has been truly said of Robert Stephenson:
“He almost worshiped his father’s memory, and said he owed all to his father’s training, his example, and his character; and he declared in public: ‘It is my great pride to remember that, whatever may have been done, and however extensive may have been my own connexion in the railway development, all I owe, and all I have done is primarily due, to the parent whose memory I cherish and revere.’ Like his father, he was eminently practical, and yet always open to the influence and guidance of correct theory.
“In society Robert Stephenson was simple, unobtrusive, and modest; but charming, and even fascinating, in an eminent degree. Sir John Lawrence has said of him, that he was, of all others, the man he most delighted to meet in England, he was so manly, yet gentle, and withal so great.
“His great wealth enabled him to perform many generous acts in a right noble and yet modest manner, not letting his right hand know what his left hand did.”[[99]]