From the Leisure Hour.

ROBERT STEPHENSON.

[IN connection with the very fine and accurate portrait of this renowned engineer of England, at the head of this number of the Eclectic, we place before our readers a brief biographical sketch of his life and parentage. Many will look with interest on the lineaments of the face of a man whose talents and genius have done so much to facilitate human intercourse, and whose skill has reared so many colossal structures.]

"In our island history enrolled,

Among the glorious dead,

His spirit leaves her everlasting trace, Where'er impetuous speeds the fiery car." Mark the spot where, in the family Bible of a Northumbrian couple in the humblest social position at Wylam colliery, near Newcastle, the record was entered of their second child, George-" born June 9 day, 1781;" and be willing to render all possible aid to the development of every child, however poor the homestead and lowly the condition. Little thought father and mother, if an answer could have At the period when the Americans been returned to the question, "What were fighting their way to become a manner of child shall this be ?" that it great independent cotton-growing nation would have indicated one combining the just after the completion of remarkable most invincible resolution, with patient mechanical inventions at home for the painstaking and mavellous capacity, the preparation of the downy material, the fruit of which has been a total revolution spinning jenny, water-frame, and mule- in the internal communications of the civ jenny, with the improved steam engine—ilized world, and a name henceforth just before horse-posts, loitering at every village inn to gossip with "mine host" or the ostler, began to be superseded on the highroads by mail coaches for the conveyThe mighty unforgotten men of old." ance of letters, traveling some six miles Life was a hard up-hill trudge for boy, an hour-about the time that Sunday- youth, and man for many a weary year. school instruction dawned in its blessed-Yet on he went gallantly, as if a consciousness upon the land-and the very year that Herschel doubted the known bounds of the solar universe-George Stephenson was born. We string these facts to gether, because he lived to achieve no mean victory over space and time by quickening locomotion; alter postal arrangements completely; render tens of thousands of juveniles belonging to the impoverished classes happy excursionists on their school holiday, passing from dingy towns to the clear streams, green fields, and sylvan scenes of the country; and because the great work of his life, the First Grand Experimental Railway, was originally conceived with no other object in view than that of facilitating the transport of cotton from the quays of Liverpool to the factories of Manchester. "His task has lessened labor, vanquished space; And through remotest years, beheld afar,

ness possessed him of a high destiny hinging upon surmounting the difficulties incident to straitened circumstances, which inspired the resolution to strain every nerve in the grapple with them rather than be defeated. Many were the avocations successfully followed, and multifarious the handicrafts incidentally mastered. Originally a cowherd, then a hoer of turnips, next a clearer of coal from stones and dross, he was promoted, at the age of fourteen, to be assistant to his honest old father, who was fireman at a colliery pumping-engine, then appointed plugman at twelve shillings a week, and next breaksman at nearly twenty shillings; while to a night school he repaired to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, and exhaust the accomplishments of its master. At the same time he contrived to be proficient in cutting out suits of

"O'er whose young morn, Cold penury her wintry shadows threw, Alone in toil, in contumely and scorn, Still to his heaven-appointed mission true," deserved to succeed; and never was success in great ends more complete than his.

clothes, which the colliers' wives made up | Killingworth colliery, seven miles north for their husbands, making shoes and of Newcastle, where the elder Stephenlasts, mending clocks and watches, and son laid the broad foundation of his lofty became so well up in the latter art and renown while an engine-wright in the sermystery as to be known to common fame vice of Lord Ravensworth. The cottage as the best clock-doctor in the north he occupied still stands, with the sun-dial country. Such a man, over the door, the joint work of the inmates. Having procured a copy of Ferguson's Astronomy, the boy drew out on paper, under his father's direction, a dial suited to the latitude of Killingworth. A stone proper for the purpose was then obtained, and, after much hewing and polishing, the stone dial was fixed in front of the cottage, to the wonderment of the villagers. It bears the date, "August 11th, MDCCCXVI." Many now alive in the neighborhood can well remember Robert, dressed in a homespun coat of George's own cut, full of life and fond of pranks, which, however, had generally some intelligent object in view. On one occasion the sire found the mischievous youngster busily engaged, by means of a kite, in imitating Franklin's experiment, and drawing down electric sparks into the hind-quarters of his pony. On this pony he might be seen morning and evening cantering to and from school at Newcastle, with his wallet of provisions for the day, and bag of books slung over his shoulder.

Twenty-one years had passed away, when the breaksman entered Newburn church with pretty Fanny Henderson, about to become his wife. Poor Robert Gray was there likewise to act the part of bridesman, and had a pension ultimately bequeathed to him for life for his services. Joyfully the young husband, with his bride behind him on a pillion, took her on horseback to his home, then at Willington Quay, on the north bank of the Tyne, about six miles from Newcastle. Mark another spot, as unpretentious as the preceding. In the second story of this house, and in the room lighted by the window next to that built up with brickwork, the wife became a mother, and gave birth to a boy, Robert, worthy his sire's renown, who lived to a send the locomotive whistling through the land of the Pharaohs, span the mighty St. Lawrence, and leave monuments of his constructive ability upon four continents. This house no longer exists. It was taken down to make way for the Stephen son Memorial Institute, and we can not but regret that its removal was considered necessary. Nor refrain we from expressing the natural wish, that Fanny Henderson had survived to witness the fame of her husband and son, and share their prosperity. But she died when the child was too young to appreciate the bereavement, and for a time the loss of his first love covered the father's hearth with darkness.

Robert Stephenson was born on the 16th of December, 1803. Cast upon the sole care of his father in tender years, he was almost constantly by his side, watching him while poring over models, plans, drawings, and diagrams, and while attending to the details of practical engineering. His boyhood was passed at West Moor,

School-days were followed by an ap prenticeship to the well-known Nicholas Wood, as an under-coal-viewer, at Killingworth; and at this subterranean occupation some three years were passed, not without the experience of great peril. Once, while with the master and a fellowworkman in an unfrequented part of the pit, there was an explosion of firedamp. Instantly the party were blown down, and the lights extinguished. They were a mile away from the shaft, and quite in the dark. Robert and his comrade, under the first impulse, on recovering, ran towards the shaft at full speed, till the latter halted, saying, "Stop, laddie, stop; we maun gang back, and seek the maister." Gallantly they returned, and rescued him, stunned and bruised, from danger. As the father's circumstances improved, the son's prospects brightened; and, to qualify him for a higher position, he was taken from coal-viewing, and sent in the year 1820, at the age of seventeen, to the University of Edinburgh. Only the expense of a single session could be afforded. But so diligently was it improved, that at the end of six months he

came back with the prize for mathematics, | brings misery, a gold mine ruin." It was and with the better prize of the knowledge how to teach himself.

At this period, the elder Stephenson was engaged in surveying a line for the Stockton and Darlington railway, the first iron road constructed for the purposes of general traffic, and the first public highway on which locomotive engines were regularly employed, but originally intended to be worked by horse-power. Robert trudged by his side, entering the figures while his father took the sights. They began their task with the first blush of dawn, and continued it till dusk, taking their chance of getting bread and milk for refreshment, or a homely dinner in some cottage by the wayside. Eager discussions passed between the two respecting the locomotive, as alterations and improvements in matters of detail were suggested; but both agreed in confident anticipations of its ultimate triumph over every other species of tractive power on railways. After assisting for a short time in the steam engine manufactory, then in its infancy at Newcastle, Robert Stephenson accepted a mining appointment in South America, as it was conceived that the voyage thither, with change of climate, would be of service to his health, injured by severe application. From this engagement, which extended over three years, he returned towards the close of 1827, meeting with a singular adventure by the way.

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a most fortunate meeting for him, for he was at once relieved of further embarrassment by an advance of £50. The parties were soon in earnest conversation upon a subject in which both took the deepest interest-the steam-horse. But Trevithick's ideas never went beyond a steamcarriage adapted for use on common roads, an example of which, as successful as any other, he had invented and patented before Robert Stephenson was born. Coleridge used to tell an anecdote with great glee respecting this machine, during a trial of it, in an obscure district of Cornwall, by the inventor and his partner Vivian. While at the top of its speed, they saw a closed toll-bar before them. Vivian called to Trevithick, who was behind to slacken speed; but the momentum was so great, that the engine was only brought to a stand close to the gate, which the keeper quickly threw open in utter consternation. What's to pay?" shouted Vivian. But not a word could the man articulate. "What's to pay ?” was again demanded. "No-noth-nothing to pay," he at last replied, shaking from top to toe; "do, my de-dear Mr. Devil, drive on as fast as you can; nothing to pay." It is remarkable of the two Englishmen who so unexpectedly met at Carthagena, that some sixteen years previous, Trevithick had exhibited his steam-carriage in the metropolis, which conveyed a load of passengers in an inclosed piece of Having reached Carthagena, on the ground near Euston Square-the very Gulf of Darien, he was compelled to halt spot from which, seven years later, Stein that miserable town, one of the strong-phenson started the North Western Railholds of the yellow fever, awaiting a ship to convey him to New-York. In the comfortless public room of the wretched inn, he met with an Englishman, taN, gaunt, and care-worn, evidently in the last stage of impoverishment. The stranger proved to be a brother engineer, well known by name, Mr. Richard Trevithick, the Don Ricardo Trevithick of Peruvian celebrity, to whom we have had occasion to refer.* All the brilliant prospects placed before him by the authorities of that country, founded upon the drainage of the silver mines by steam-power, had beer utterly disappointed; and he was making his way to England almost penniless, a living example of the truth of the Spanish proverb, that " a silver mine

way.

On returning from the Western world, Robert Stephenson again joined the factory at Newcastle. He had indeed been expressly recalled to aid his father with the locomotive, and prepare the iron steed for the opening day of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the 15th of September, 1830. The triumph then was complete. Though clouded by the me'ancholy accident to Mr. Huskisson, yet that event served to illustrate its efficiency, for, to obtain medical help, the wounded body of the statesman was conveyed some fifteen miles in twenty-five minutes, or at the rate of thirty-six miles an hour-a speed which came upon the world with the surprise of a new and unlooked-for phenomenon. From this period, the

*No. 389. "First Steam Engine in South America." establishment at Newcastle took a start