be blown to atoms. But there was always this consolation to wind up with-the weight of the locomotive would prevent its moving, and railways could never be worked by steam-power. The bill for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at length came before a committee of the House of Commons. Privately, Mr Stephenson talked of driving twenty miles an hour; but the counsel warned him of such folly, and in evidence he restricted himself to ten miles an hour. But assuming this speed,' said a member of the committee, suppose that a cow were to stray upon the line and get in the way of the engine; would not that, think you, be a very awkward circumstance?' 'Yes,' replied the witness, with his strong Northumberland burr, and a merry twinkle in his eye-'yes, verry awkward indeed for the coo!'

which a multitude of persons had assembled-carriages
filling the narrow lanes, and barges crowding the river.
The people gazed with wonder and admiration at the
trains which sped along the line, far above their heads,
at the rate of twenty-four miles an hour. At Parkside,
seventeen miles from Liverpool, the engines stopped to
take in water. Here a deplorable accident occurred to
one of the most distinguished of the illustrious visitors
present, which threw a deep shadow over the subsequent
proceedings of the day. The Northumbrian' engine,
with the carriage containing the Duke of Wellington,
was drawn up on one line, in order that the whole of
the trains might pass in review before him and his
Mr Huskisson had, unhappily,
party on the other.
alighted from the carriage, and was standing on the
opposite road, along which the 'Rocket' engine was
observed rapidly coming up. At this moment the
Duke of Wellington, between whom and Mr Huskisson
and held out his hand. A hurried but friendly grasp
some coolness had existed, made a sign of recognition,
was given; and before it was loosened, there was a
general cry from the bystanders of 'Get in, get in!"
Flurried and confused, Mr Huskisson endeavoured to
get round the open door of the carriage which projected
over the opposite rail, but in so doing he was struck
down by the Rocket,' and falling with his leg doubled
across the rail, the limb was instantly crushed. His
first words, on being raised, were, 'I have met my
death,' which unhappily proved too true, for he expired
that same evening in the neighbouring parsonage of
Eccles. It was cited at the time, as a remarkable fact,
that the Northumbrian' engine conveyed the wounded
body of the unfortunate gentleman a distance of about
fifteen miles in twenty-five minutes, or at the rate of
thirty-six miles an hour. This incredible speed burst
upon the world with all the effect of a new and
unlooked-for phenomenon.

Mr Stephenson-'that unprofessional person,' as one of the engineers of the day called him-failed to convince the committee, and the bill was lost. 'We must persevere, sir,' was his invariable reply, when friends hinted that he might be wrong; and a second bill was brought in, which, as the new line carefully avoided the lands of a few short-sighted opponents, passed the House of Commons by 88 to 41, and the House of Lords with the opposition of only Lord Derby and Lord Wilton. The railway was commenced; and though told by the first engineers of the day that no man in his senses would attempt to carry it through Chat Moss, Mr Stephenson did so, at a cost not of £270,000, but of only £28,000, and he completed the line in a substantial and business-like manner. But the adoption of the locomotive was still an open question, and he stood alone among the engineers of the day. The most advanced professional men concurred in recommending fixed engines. 'We must persevere, sir,' was still George's motto. He persuaded the directors to give the locomotive a trial, and he made an engine for the purpose. The trial came on, 6th October 1829. The engine started on its journey, dragging after it about thirteen tons' weight in wagons, and made the first ten trips backwards and forwards along the two miles of road, running the thirty-five miles, including stoppages, in an hour and forty-eight minutes. The second ten trips were in like manner performed in two hours and three minutes. The maximum velocity attained by the 'Rocket' during the trial-trip was twenty-nine miles an hour, or about three times the speed that one of the judges of the competition had declared to be the limit of possibility. Now,' cried one of the directors, lifting up his hands joined in it. On one occasion, an animated discussion 'now is George Stephenson at last delivered.' This decided the question; locomotives were immediately constructed and put upon the line; and the public opening of the work took place on the 15th September 1830.

[Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.] The completion of the work was justly regarded as a great national event, and was celebrated accordingly. The Duke of Wellington, then prime-minister, Sir Robert Peel, secretary of state, Mr Huskisson, one of the members for Liverpool, and an earnest supporter of the project from its commencement, were present, together with a large number of distinguished personages. The Northumbrian' engine took the lead of the procession, and was followed by the other locomotives and their trains, which accommodated about six hundred persons. Many thousands of spectators cheered them on their way through the deep ravine of Olive Mount; up the Sutton incline; over the Sankey viaduct, beneath

The fortune of George Stephenson was now made. He became a great man. He was offered, but refused, a knighthood, and his latter days were spent as those of a country gentleman. He died in 1848, at the age of sixty-seven.

[George Stephenson at Sir Robert Peel's seat of Drayton.]

Though mainly an engineer, he was also a daring thinker on many scientific questions; and there was scarcely a subject of speculation, or a department of recondite science, on which he had not employed his faculties in such a way as to have formed large and original views. At Drayton the conversation often turned upon such topics, and Mr Stephenson freely

took place between himself and Dr Buckland on one of his favourite theories as to the formation of coal. But the result was, that Dr Buckland, a much greater master of tongue-fence than Stephenson, completely silenced him. Next morning before breakfast, when he was walking in the grounds deeply pondering, Sir William Follett came up and asked what he was thinking about? 'Why, Sir William, I am thinking over that argument I had with Buckland last night. I know I am right, and that if I had only the command of words which he has, I'd have beaten him.' 'Let me know all about it,' said Sir William, and I'll see what I can do for you.' The two sat down in an arbour, where the astute lawyer made himself thoroughly acquainted with the points of the case; entering into it with all the zeal of an advocate about to plead the dearest interests of his client. After he had mastered the subject, Sir William rose up, rubbing his hands with glee, and said: 'Now I am ready for him.' Sir Robert Peel was made acquainted with the plot, and adroitly introduced the subject of the controversy after dinner. The result was, that in the argument which followed, the man of science was

overcome by the man of law; and Sir William Follett had at all points the mastery over Dr Buckland. 'What do you say, Mr Stephenson?' asked Sir Robert, laughing. Why,' said he, I will only say this, that of all the powers above and under the earth, there seems to me to be no power so great as the gift of the gab.' One day at dinner, during the same visit, a scientific lady asked him the question, Mr Stephenson, what do you consider the most powerful force in nature?' 'Oh!' said he, in a gallant spirit, 'I will soon answer that question: it is the eye of a woman for the man who loves her; for if a woman look with affection on a young man, and he should go to the uttermost ends of the earth, the recollection of that look will bring him back; there is no other force in nature that could do that.' One Sunday, when the party had just returned from church, they were standing together on the terrace near the hall, and observed in the distance a railway train flashing along, throwing behind it a long line of white steam. Now, Buckland,' said Mr Stephenson, I have a poser for you. Can you tell me what is the power that is driving that train?' 'Well,' said the other, 'I suppose it is one of your big engines.' 'But what drives the engine?" "Oh, very likely a canny Newcastle driver.' 'What do you say to the light of the sun?' 'How can that be?" asked the doctor. It is nothing else,' said the engineer; 'it is light bottled up in the earth for tens of thousands of years-light, absorbed by plants and vegetables, being necessary for the condensation of carbon during the process of their growth, if it be not carbon in another form-and now, after being buried in the earth for long ages in fields of coal, that latent light is again brought forth and liberated, made to work, as in that locomotive, for great human purposes.' The idea was certainly a most striking and original one: like a flash of light, it illuminated in an instant an entire field of science.

MR ROBERT STEPHENSON, son of Mr George Stephenson (born in 1803, and educated partly at the University of Edinburgh), has laboured successfully to bring the railway locomotive to its present perfection. To his genius and perseverance, aided by the practical knowledge of Mr Fairbairn, Manchester, we also owe the principle of the tubular bridge, characterised by Professor Forbes as the greatest discovery in construction in our day.' At the Menai Strait, two spaces of 460 feet in width are spanned by these iron tubes. Telford's suspension Menai Bridge-the noblest work of the kind in the kingdom-spans a space of 580 feet.

his wealth and rank could have commanded-' a wonderful piece of intellectual clock-work,' says Dr Wilson; and as he lived by rule, he died by it, predicting his death as if it had been the eclipse of some great luminary, and counting the very moment when the shadow of the unseen world should enshroud him in its darkness.' Dr Wilson, the biographer of Cavendish, has written treatises on chemistry and electricity, colour blindness, &c. He is a native of Edinburgh (born in 1818), and has been very successful as a chemical lecturer. A Life of Dr John Dalton, by DR HENRY, is another of the valuable publications of the Cavendish Society. Dalton (1766-1844) is the chief author of the theory of chemical equivalents, or the atomic theory-as he preferred to call it-and of many important researches on the constitution of elastic fluids. Poor, and hardly winning a well-earned subsistence by private tuition, from the time he was himself a child until near the close of his long career-with a few friends, a scanty education, and a scantier unheeded efforts, and by means of an apparatus library-attaining, through his unaided and almost constructed entirely by himself, a position in the world of science unquestionably not second to that of either of his more highly favoured contemporaries, Black or Cavendish.'-(Forbes.) A Life of Dr Black, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh (1728-1799), forms one of the best of Lord Brougham's short scientific memoirs. chemical discoveries are those of latent and specific heat, the former of which was so successfully applied by Watt in his improvement of the steam-engine.

THOMAS CARLYLE.

His

The writings of Mr Carlyle are so various, that he challenges attention as biographer, translator, critic, moralist, and political satirist. His greatest

Other valuable scientific biographies may be here noticed. The Life of Sir Humphry Davy, by his brother, DR JOHN DAVY, has already been mentioned. It accompanies an edition of Sir Humphry's works, nine volumes, 1839-40; and an edition has recently (1858) been made to the memoir by Dr Davy, in a volume of Fragmentary Remains, Literary and Scientific, with a new sketch of the life and selections from the correspondence of Sir Humphry. This work shews us a little more of the interior life of the great chemist, but is unsatisfactory. The Life of Cavendish, by DR GEORGE WILSON, forms part of the series of publications of the Cavendish Society. The Hon. Henry Cavendish (1731-1810) made important researches in chemistry and electricity. To him we are mainly or entirely indebted for the knowledge of hydrogen as a distinct elastic fluid or gas; of the exact constitution of the atmosphere, and the wonderful constancy of its ingredients; of the composition of nitric acid; and, finally, according to the opinion of most persons-at and most splendid successes, however, have been least till lately-of the non-elementary nature of water and of its precise ingredients.'-(Forbes.) Cavendish was a solitary, incommunicative man, shunning society, eschewing all the luxuries that

Thomas Carlyle.

won in his capacity of biographer. Indeed, the chief interest and charm of his historical works and essays consist in the individual portraits they contain and the strong personal sympathies or

antipathies they awaken. He has a clear and conducted by Sir David Brewster, and translated penetrating insight into human nature; he notes Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Mr Carlyle's translation every fact and circumstance that can elucidate appeared in 1824, but without his name. Its merits character, and having selected his subject, he works were too palpable to be overlooked, though some with passionate earnestness till he reproduces the critics objected to the strong infusion of German individual or scene before the reader, exact in out-phraseology which the translator had imported into line according to his preconceived notion, and with his English version. This never left Mr Carlyle marvellous force and vividness of colouring. Even as a landscape-painter-a character he by no means affects-Mr Carlyle has rarely been surpassed. A Scotch shipping town, an English fen, or a Welsh valley, is depicted by him in a few words with the distinctness and reality of a photograph.

Worship.) Mr Carlyle works out this theory-the clothes philosophy-and finds the world false and hollow, our institutions mere worn-out rags or disguises, and that our only safety lies in flying from falsehood to truth, and becoming in harmony with the 'divine idea.' There is much fanciful, grotesque description in Sartor, but also deep thought and beautiful imagery. The hearty love of truth seems to constitute the germ of Mr Carlyle's philosophy, as Milton said it was the foundation of eloquence. Sartor, however, found comparatively few admirers. Its author appears to have removed to London before 1837, as in that year he delivered lectures on German literature in Willis's Rooms, and in the following year another course in Edward Street, Portman Square, on the History of Literature, or the Successive Periods of European Culture. Two other courses of lectures and the other on Heroes and Hero Worship, 1840 -one on the Revolutions of Modern Europe, 1839,

added to the popularity of Mr Carlyle. It appeared, said Leigh Hunt, as if some Puritan had come to life again, liberalised by German philosophy and his own intense reflections and experience.'

professional or other office, we live to cultivate literature according to our strength, and in our own peculiar way. We wish a joyful growth to the rose and flowers of our garden; we hope for health and peaceful thoughts to further our aims. The roses, indeed, are still in part to be planted, but they blossom already in anticipation. Two ponies, which carry us everywhere, and the mountain air, are the best medicines for weak nerves. This daily exercise, to which I am much devoted, is my only recreation; for this nook of ours is the loneliest in Britain-six miles removed from any one likely to visit me. Here Rousseau would have been as happy as on his island of St Pierre. My town friends, indeed, ascribe my sojourn here to a similar disposition, and forebode me no good result. But I came hither solely with the design to simplify my way of life, and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself. This bit of earth is our own: here we can live, write, and think, as best pleases ourselves, even though Zoilus himself were to be crowned the monarch of literature. Nor is the solitude of such great importance: for a stage-coach takes us speedily to Edinburgh, which we look upon as our British Weimar. And have I not, too, at this moment, piled upon the table of my little library, a whole cart-load of French, This vein of Puritanism running German, American, and English journals and periodicals-whatever may be their worth? Of antiquarian through the speculations of the lecturer and moral studies, too, there is no lack. From some of our heights censor, has been claimed as peculiarly northern. I can descry, about a day's journey to the west, the hillThat earnestness,' says Mr Hannay, that grim where Agricola and his Romans left a camp behind them. humour-that queer, half-sarcastic, half-sympaAt the foot of it I was born, and there both father and thetic fun-is quite Scotch. It appears in Knox mother still live to love me. And so one must let time and Buchanan, and it appears in Burns. I was work. But whither am I wandering? Let me confess not surprised when a school-fellow of Carlyle's told to you, I am uncertain about my future literary activity, me that his favourite poem as a boy was Death and and would gladly learn your opinion respecting it; at Dr Hornbook. And if I were asked to explain this least pray write to me again, and speedily, that I may originality, I should say that he was a Covenanter ever feel myself united to you. The only piece of coming in the wake of the eighteenth century and any importance that I have written since I came here, the transcendental philosophy. He has gone into is an Essay on Burns. Perhaps you never heard of the hills against "shams," as they did against him, and yet he is a man of the most decided genius; Prelacy, Erastianism, and so forth. But he lives but born in the lowest rank of peasant life, and through in a quieter age and in a literary position. So he the entanglements of his peculiar position, was at length can give play to the humour which existed in them mournfully wrecked, so that what he effected is com- as well, and he overflows with a range of reading paratively unimportant. He died in the middle of his and speculation to which they were necessarily career, in the year 1796. We English, especially we strangers.' But at least one-half the originality Scotch, love Burns more than any poet that lived for here sketched, style as well as sentiment, must centuries. I have often been struck by the fact that he be placed to the account of German studies. In was born a few months before Schiller, in the year 1759, 1837 appeared The French Revolution, a History by and that neither of them ever heard the other's name. Thomas Carlyle. This is the ablest of all the They shone like stars in opposite hemispheres, or, if you author's works, and is indeed one of the most will, the thick mist of earth intercepted their reciprocal remarkable books of the age. The first perusal of light. it forms a sort of era in a man's life, and fixes for ever in his memory the ghastly panorama of the Revolution, its scenes and actors. In 1848 Mr Carlyle collected his contributions to the Reviews, and published them under the title of Miscellanies, extending to five volumes. The biographical portion of these volumes-essays on Voltaire, Mirabeau, Johnson and Boswell, Burns, Sir Walter Scott, &c.

**

In this country residence Mr Carlyle wrote papers for the Foreign Review, and his Sartor Resartus, which, after being rejected by several publishers, appeared in Fraser's Magazine, 1833-34. The book might well have puzzled the 'booktasters' who decide for publishers on works submitted to them in manuscript. Sartor professes to be a review of a German treatise on dress, and the hero, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, is made to illustrate by his life and character the transcendental philosophy of Fichte, adopted by Mr Carlyle, which is thus explained: "That all things which we see or work with in this earth, especially we ourselves and all persons, are as a kind of vesture or sensuous appearance: that under all these lies, as the essence of them, what he calls the "Divine Idea of the World;" this is the reality which lies at the bottom of all appearance. To the mass of men no such divine idea is recognisable in the world; they live merely, says Fichte, among the superficialities, practicalities, and shows of the world, not dreaming that there is anything divine under them.'-(Hero

is admirably executed. They are compact, complete, and at once highly picturesque and suggestive. The character and history of Burns he has drawn with a degree of insight, true wisdom, and pathos not surpassed in any biographical or critical production of the present century. Mr Thackeray's essay on Swift resembles it in power, but it is more of a sketch. The two next appearances of Mr Carlyle were political, and on this ground he seems shorn of his strength. Chartism, 1839, and Past and Present, 1843, contain many weighty truths and shrewd observations, directed against all shams, cant, formulas, speciosities, &c.; but when we look for a remedy for existing evils, and ask how we are to replace the forms and institutions which Mr Carlyle would have extinguished, we find little to