preparation for it: we believe, indeed, that there are few things the Emperor of the French would more desire than to be furnished with a good excuse to his army and his people for declining the undertaking. Again, while desiring above all things to see the great mass of our population, and especially of the upper and middleclasses, trained to the use of arms, we would wish it could be better seen-what the lessons of all history tend to show-that regular troops must be mainly withstood by regular troops; and that the people of this country must be prepared to forego their ancient prejudice against a standing army. Not that we would emulate in this respect the great military despotisms of the Continent -that we could not do if we wouldbut we ought at least to provide that not more than one-half of the force with which we should meet the enemy should be aught but regular troops. Then the militia and volunteers would be invaluable. Equally beneficial would be the local militia as a reserve, already equipped and armed, and in the course of two or three months ready with the rest of the regular army and embodied militia to meet any troops in the field. Not less anxious must we be to see the rôle to be played by our fortifications well considered and prepared beforehand; to see our naval fortresses made independent of all support from the interior of the country, from which they would be cut off'; in short, to see them converted into naval arsenals, as well as being, as at present, royal dockyards; lastly, we desire to see some base of operations prepared for our army, militia, and volunteers, which would at once be their retreat in case of disaster; unassailable while they should be gathering up for a

renewed struggle; a depôt on the largest scale of military stores and equipment of every kind, and an arsenal for the fabrication of every kind of arm, and for the supply of ammunition. Whether London, or Woolwich, or some other well-selected position (perhaps the vicinity of Birmingham would present peculiar advantages) may be chosen, the choice of some such fortified position appears to us indispensable, otherwise our army would be en l'air, and the capture of its present undefended arsenal would deprive it of all means of prolonging the contest.

These questions, and many others connected with our subject, will doubtless occupy the serious attention of our Legislature in the next session. We cannot conceive a more patriotic resolution on the part of any Englishman at the present juncture than that of endeavouring, by careful study and reflection, to make up his mind on this vital matter. If such consideration of the question could but become general, we should have a strong public opinion ready to support the Government and Legislature in the most decisive measures

they could propose. If public opinion is weak and vapid, and not interested in the subject, the action of Government will be proportionally feeble and desultory. In short, we believe that never in the course of its history has the English people held its destinies, under Providence, more in its own hands than at this moment; and it will depend upon our use of the means with which that Providence has most bounti fully provided us, whether, in the trying times that seem to be approaching, we shall continue to preserve the honour of our country as intact as we have received it from those who have gone before us. J. E. A.

1850.]

ABOUT forty years since a little

boy, the son of a colliery engineman at Killingworth, dressed in a suit of homely grey stuff cut out by his father, was accustomed to ride to Newcastle daily upon a donkey, for the purpose of attending school there. Years passed, and the boy became the man known to worldwide fame as Robert Stephenson, the engineer. He died, and on the 14th of October last he was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, side by side with the departed Kings, statesmen, and great men of his country.

It is but ten years since the remains of George Stephenson, the father, were quietly interred in a small church on the outskirts of the town of Chesterfield, followed to the grave principally by his own work-people. The event excited little interest beyond the bounds of that secluded locality. Yet George Stephenson, thus obscurely buried, was the inventor of the passenger locomotive, and the founder of the now gigantic railway system of England and of the world; and it is only within the last few years that the public have learnt from his biography how great a man then passed from the earth. But the honours which George Stephenson failed to receive during his life and at his death, and which, in the strength of his self-dependence, he would have been the last to seek, have at length not unworthily been reflected upon his eminently meritorious son; and those who hereafter read his tablet and contemplate his monument in Westminster Abbey, will probably not fail to remember that Robert Stephenson was himself one of the best products of his great father's manly affection, his noble character, and his indefatigable industry.

As the son of George Stephenson, Robert was emphatically well-born. Every reader now knows the story of the father's life-his early encounter with poverty and difficulty, his strenuous endeavours after selfeducation, his determination to gain 'insight' into all the details of his

business, his patience, his bravery, his self-discipline, and self-reliance. But greatest of all was his manly love for his only son, and his resolution, formed almost as soon as the boy was born, and steadily acted out in his life, that no labour, nor pains, nor self-denial should be spared to furnish him with the best education that it was in his power to bestow. His own words on the subject are memorable:- In the earlier period of my career,' said he,

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.'

The father moreover taught the boy to work with him, and trained him as it were to educate himself. When a little fellow not big enough to reach so high as to put a clockhead on, his father would make him mount a chair for the purpose; and to help father' became the proudest work which the boy then, and ever after, could take part in. This daily and unceasing example of industry and application, working on before the boy's eyes in the person of a loving and beloved father, imprinted itself deeply upon his mind, in characters never to be effaced. A spirit of self-improvement took session of him, which continued to influence him through life; and to the close of his career he was proud to confess that, if his success had been great, it was mainly to the example and training of his father that he owed it.

pos

When Robert went to Mr. Bruce's school at Newcastle, he was a rough, unpolished country lad, speaking the broad dialect of the pitmen; and the other boys would tease him occasionally, for the purpose of provoking an outburst of his Killing

worth Doric. But he was kindly of disposition, and a diligent pupil; Mr. Bruce frequently holding him up to the laggards of the school as an example of good conduct and industry. He was accustomed to spend much of his spare time at the rooms of the Literary and Philosophical Institute; and when he went home in the evenings he would recount to his father the results of his reading. Sometimes he was allowed to take to Killingworth a volume of the Repertory of Arts and Sciences, which the father and son studied together, George laying great stress upon his son's being able to read and understand the plans and diagrams without reference to the written descriptions. Sometimes they tried chemical experiments together, assisted by Wigham, a neighbouring farmer's son; and occasionally Robert experimented on his own account, as, for instance, upon the cows in Wigham's enclosure, which he electrified by means of his electric kite, making them run about the field with their tails on end, and on another occasion upon his father's Galloway when standing at the cottage door, nearly knocking the pony down by

the smartness of the shock.

George was about this time occupied with the invention of his safety lamp, and Robert was present and assisted in making many of the experiments upon the fire-damp brought from the Killingworth pits. On one occasion George was engaged in experimenting by means of a gasometer and glass receivers borrowed from the Newcastle Institute; Nicholas Wood being appointed to turn the cocks, and Robert to time the experiment. The flame being observed to descend in the tube, the word was given to turn the cock, but unfortunately Wood turned it the wrong way; the gas exploded, and the apparatus was blown to pieces, though fortunately no one was hurt. At other times, Robert was engaged in embodying in a practical shape the drawings of machines and instruments which he found described in the books he read; amongst other things, constructing a theodolite spirit-level, on which he engraved the words, Robert Stephenson,

fecit.' Another of his works, while he was still at Bruce's school, was the sun-dial, the joint work of father and son, constructed after much study and labour, and eventually fixed over the cottage door at Killingworth, where it is still to be

seen.

Not long since Mr. Stephen

son visited the place with some friends, and pointed out the very desk in the little room of the cottage at which he had studied the plan of the dial and calculated the latitude of his village.

The youth left school well grounded in the ordinary branches of education, and an adept in arithmetic, geography, and algebra. In his after life, he with good reason attached much importance to the thorough training in mathematics which he received at Bruce's school, and considered that it had been the foundation of much of his success as an engineer in the higher walks of the profession. His father at first destined him for the business of a coal miner, and with that object apprenticed him to Nicholas Wood, then chief viewer at Killingworth. While thus engaged, Robert acquired a familiarity with underground work, which afterwards proved of much value to him; and in the evenings, after the day's work was over, he pursued his studies in mechanics under the eye of his father, who had by this time been advanced to the post of chief enginewright of the colliery.

The Killingworth locomotive was now in full work, and Robert became familiar with its every detail. The possible adaptation of the engine to more important uses than the hauling of coal to the shipping place, the improvement of the steam blast (employed in all the engines. constructed by Stephenson subsequent to the year 1815), and the enlargement of the heating surface, so as to produce a more rapid supply of steam, formed the subject of repeated evening discussions in the cottage of the Stephensons. Of the two, the youth was at that time by much the most sanguine, his father holding him back' by setting up all manner of objections for him to answer, and thus in the most effectual way cultivating his faculties and stimulating his inven

1859.]

tiveness. It was a happy time for both, full of discipline, co-operation, self-improvement, and steadily advancing mechanical ability.

The father, however, was not satisfied with the knowledge which his son might thus laboriously acquire by studying in company with himselfat Killingworth. He was fully conscious of his own want of scientific knowledge, which had hampered him at every stage of his career. Above all things, he desired that Robert should be well grounded in the principles of natural science; for which purpose he felt it would be necessary to place him under disciplined teachers. He resolved accordingly, to send Robert to Edinburgh University, where he spent the winter and summer sessions of 1820-1, attending the classes of Natural Philosophy under_Sir John Leslie; Mineralogy under Professor Jamieson, and Chemistry under Dr. Hope. Young Stephenson was one of the most diligent and hard-working students of his year. He took copious notes of all the lectures, which he was accustomed carefully to write out, and afterwards to consult even to the close of his life. One evening, a few years ago, an engineering friend was discussing with him in his library in Gloucester-square some scientific point, when Mr. Stephenson rose, and took down from the shelves a thick volume, for the purpose of consulting it. On the question being asked, 'What have we here?' he replied, When I went to college, I knew the difficulty my father had in collecting money to send me there; before going I studied short-hand, and while at Edinburgh I took down verbatim every lecture I attended; every evening before I went to bed I transcribed those lectures word for word, and you see the result in that range of books.'

It was a good custom of Professor Jamieson, at the close of each session, to select the most diligent and meritorious of his pupils to accompany him in a botanical and geological excursion over some of the most interesting parts of Scotland; and Robert Stephenson was one of these favoured pupils at the close of the session of 1820-1. Only

663

about a year before his death, when he was making an excursion in his yacht with a party of friends through the Caledonian Canal, he took occasion to point out some of the ground which he had gone over during that delightful excursion with his professor, and he then expressed the practical advantages which he had derived from studying the great works of the Creator upon the chart of Nature itself. The students' excursion ended, Robert returned to Killingworth; and his father was a proud man when his son reported the progress he had made, and, above all, when he laid before him the prize for mathematics which he had won at the University. The cost of the year's education was about eighty pounds; but though a large sum in the estimation of both father and son at the time, George then and afterwards declared that it was one of the best investments of money which he had ever made.

We have been thus particular in describing the several stages in the education of Robert Stephenson, and the active part which his father took in the process, because it was thus that the foundations of his character were laid. The young man was now to enter by himself upon the road of life, fortified by good example, his habits well trained, his faculties well disciplined, and fully conscious that the issue rested mainly with himself. For several years more, however, he remained under his father's eye, passing through the admirable discipline of the workshop, to which he himself in after years was accustomed to attach the greatest importance. At the meeting of Mechanical Engineers, held at Newcastle, in August, 1858, he used these words, Having been brought up originally as a mechanical engineer, and seen perhaps as much as any one of the other branches of the profession, I feel justified in insisting that the civil engineering department is best founded upon the mechanical knowledge obtained in the workshop. I have ever been fully conscious how greatly my civil engineering has been modified by the mechanical knowledge which I acquired from my father; and the further my ex

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perience has advanced, the more have I been convinced that it is necessary to educate an engineer in the workshop. That is the education, emphatically, which is calculated to render the engineer most intelligent, most useful, and the fullest of resources in times of difficulty.'

In 1824 George Stephenson was busily engaged in the construction of the Stockton and Darlington railway; and at the same time Robert was occupied in the locomotive manufactory already commenced at Newcastle, in superintending the construction of No. 1 engine, the Active,' for that railway; the same engine that was lately placed upon a pedestal in front of the Darlington station. He was also busy designing the fixed engine for the Brusselton incline, which he completed by the end of the year, when he left England for a time to take charge of the engines and machinery of a mining company newly established in Columbia, South America. Severe study and close application had begun to tell upon his health, and his father consented that he should accept the situation which had been offered him, in the hope that the change of scene and Occupation might restore him to health and strength, though ill able to dispense with his valuable assistance at that important crisis in his

own career.

The Darlington line was finished and opened, and its success was such as to encourage the Liverpool merchants shortly after to project their undertaking of a railway between that town and Manchester. The difficulties encountered in obtaining the act, and in constructing the railway across Chat Moss, are among the most interesting chapters in George Stephenson's life, and need not be adverted to here. Then began the battle of the locomotive, and the keen discussions between the advocates of fixed and travelling engines, George Stephenson standing almost alone in his advocacy of the latter. At this juncture he wrote to his son, urging him to return home, as the fate of the locomotive hung upon the issue. Accordingly we find Robert Stephenson again returned

to England, and in charge of the locomotive manufactory at Newcastle, by the end of the year 1827. From this time forward Robert was as his father's right hand, fortifying his arguments, illustrating his views, embodying his ideas in definite shapes, writing his reports to the directors, exposing the fallacies contained in the arguments put forward by the advocates of fixed engines, and in all ways energetically fighting by the side of his father the battle of the locomotivę. At length their joint perseverance produced its effect; a prize was offered for the best locomotive, and George and Robert Stephenson's engine,

The Rocket,' won the prize at Rainhill. Mr. Booth furnished the idea of the multitubular boiler; George Stephenson furnished the general plan of the engine; but the working out of the whole details, on which so much depended, was carried out by Robert Stephenson himself in the manufactory at Newcastle. Successful, however, though the performances of that engine were, it was but the beginning of Robert Stephenson's labours. For many years after, he continued to devote himself to perfecting the locomotive in all its details; and it was astonishing to observe the rapidity of the improvements effected, every engine turned out of the Stephenson workshops exhibiting an advance upon its predecessor in point of speed, power, and working efficiency.

The success of railways being now proved, railway projects multiplied in all directions, and Mr. Stephenson then decided to enter upon the business of a civil engi neer; the first railway laid out by him being the Leicester and Swanington line; after which, in conjunction with his father, he was ap pointed engineer of the London and Birmingham Railway. It is related as an illustration of his conscientious perseverance in laying out this line, that in the course of his examination of the country between London and Birmingham, he walked over the whole intervening districts upwards of twenty times. The difficulties encountered in carrying out this undertaking in those early days of railway-making were of the