[Born 1781. Died 1848. Aged 67.]
A sturdy plant of English growth. A working mind born ripe for its time.
An uncultivated power endowed with immeasurable capability. The story of
George Stephenson reads well for his country, well for himself, well for
the high faculties which Providence has given to man, irrespectively of
birth, station, education, or any accidental condition. His parentage
was of the poorest. He could not have begun his race at a more distant
point from the goal of fortune. He did not even start with his fellows
in open day, under the bright sun, on the earth’s surface. He was a
pit-engine boy, and his pay was twopence a day. It was a great rise for
him when he was made stoker, and he was on the high road to prosperity
when he found himself breaksman. Promoted to the office of engineman, he
declared that he was “now a man for life.” He first made known his
mechanical genius in the service of Lord Ravensworth, when he repaired
and improved, as an amateur, a condensing pump-engine, which had baffled
the skill of some professional engineers. Having been, for a time,
occupied in laying down some unimportant lines of rail, he went to
Liverpool to plan a line of railway between that city and Manchester. He
held out great inducements to enterprize, and made unheard-of prophecies
of success. He even undertook that a locomotive should accomplish ten
miles of distance in every hour. We must not be surprised that the
people called him “mad” for proffering the assurance. Similar madmen had
preceded him,--Columbus, Galileo,--the inventor of gas, the discoverer
of vaccination and others. The line, as we know, was made,--the
experiment tried. Stephenson was right, a locomotive can travel at the
rate of ten miles an hour. The rise of Stephenson was now rapid as the
strides of his own locomotives. He took the lead at once in railway
engineering; became a great locomotive manufacturer, an extensive
railway contractor, a large owner of collieries and iron-works, and a
man of mark in the nation. Our railway system is the result of the
multiform operations of his strong practical mind. Stephenson disputed
with Sir Humphry Davy the invention of the safety lamp. Other claimants
are in the field. We shall never know the discoverer, any more than we
shall learn the birth-place of Homer; and George Stephenson may spare
the extra laurel from his iron crown.
[By Christopher Moore, 1831. Executed for Robert Stephenson, Esq.]