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Watt, the Stephensons, Brunel, A. Maury, and others, rose up to perfect the various steam-machines already known and in use; to investigate the currents of the ocean, the different qualities of its waters, its depth and soundings, in order to make the paths of the deep easier and surer to navigators.
"No, indeed, nor any other day of the week when I want you to do anything," returned Edna, with rising excitement. "Now don't make any more excuses, Richard. Do you think I am a child to believe in your Medways and Stephensons? I saw you look at mamma before you answered, and you think she does not wish me to go." "My darling, why need you excite yourself so?" exclaimed Mrs. Sefton.
The Queen's reign can claim as its own such men as John Herschel, worthy son of an illustrious father, Airy, Adams, and Maxwell, Whewell and Brewster and Faraday, Owen and Buckland and Lyell, Murchison and Miller, Darwin and Tyndall and Huxley, with Wheatstone, one of the three independent inventors of telegraphy, and the Stephensons, father and son, to whose ability and energy we are indebted for the origination and perfection of our method of steam locomotion; it can boast such masters in philosophy as Hamilton and Whately and John Stuart Mill, each a leader of many.
So closely were the Stephensons identified with this measure, and so great was the personal interest which they were both known to take in its success, that, on the news of the triumph of the bill reaching Newcastle, a sort of general holiday took place, and the workmen belonging to the Stephenson Locomotive Factory, upwards of 800 in number, walked in procession through the principal streets of the town, accompanied with music and banners.
On the 18th of June, 1844, the Newcastle and Darlington line—an important link of the great main highway to the north—was completed and publicly opened, thus connecting the Thames and the Tyne by a continuous line of railway. On that day the Stephensons, with a distinguished party of railway men, travelled by express train from London to Newcastle in about nine hours.
On the contrary, it had to encounter as stout an opposition as the Stephensons had ever experienced. We have already stated that about this time the plan of substituting atmospheric pressure for locomotive steam-power in the working of railways, had become very popular.
And the mere chapter of accidents has left a small accumulation of chance discoveries, such as the wheel, the arch, the safety pin, gunpowder, the magnet, the Voltaic pile and so forth: things which, unlike the gospels and philosophic treatises of the sages, can be usefully understood and applied by common men; so that steam locomotion is possible without a nation of Stephensons, although national Christianity is impossible without a nation of Christs.
It was quite characteristic of the Stephensons, that, although their engine did not stand first on the list for trial, it was the first that was ready; and it was accordingly ordered out by the judges for an experimental trip. Yet the “Rocket” was by no means “the favourite” with either the judges or the spectators.
But most mechanical inventions are of a very composite character, and are led up to by the labour and the study of a long succession of workers. Thus Savary and Newcomen led up to Watt; Cugnot, Murdock, and Trevithick to the Stephensons; and Maudslay to Clement, Roberts, Nasmyth, Whitworth, and many more mechanical inventors.
While young gentlemen are talking about governing heaven and earth by verse, Wellingtons and Peels, Arkwrights and Stephensons, Frys, and Chisholms, are doing it by plain practical prose; and even of those who have moved and led the hearts of men by verse, every one, as far as we know, has produced his magical effects by poetry of the very opposite forum to that which is now in fashion.
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