can embroider muslin and forge anchors,―cut steel into ribands, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and

waves.

It would be difficult to estimate the value of the benefits which these inventions have conferred upon this country. There is no branch of industry that has not been indebted to them; and, in all the most material, they have not only widened most magnificently the field of its exertions, but multiplied a thousand-fold the amount of its productions.

It has increased indefinitely the mass of human comforts and enjoyments; and rendered cheap and accessible, all over the world, the materials of wealth and prosperity. It has armed the feeble hand of man, in short, with a power to which no limits can be assigned; completed the dominion of mind over the most refractory qualities of matter; and laid a sure foundation for all those future miracles of mechanic power which are to aid and reward the labors of after generations... It is to the genius of one man, too, that all this is mainly owing! And certainly no man ever bestowed such a gift on his kind. The blessing is not only universal, but unbounded; and the fabled inventors of the plough and the loom, who were deified by the erring gratitude of their rude contemporaries, conferred less important benefits on mankind than the inventor of our present steam-engine.

Times, Boy's Magazine, and Jeffrey's Essays.

GEORGE STEPHENSON, AND THE LOCOMOTIVE.

AMONG the ashes and slag of a poor colliery village, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, in an unplastered room, with a clay floor and garret roof, there came into the world, on a June day, seventy-six years ago, one of its best benefactors. That was George Stephenson, the founder of the railway system.

The family continued to increase; and, by the time when George was twelve years old he had three brothers and two sisters. He grew up in war times when bread was very dear, and it was bitterly difficult for working men to earn more than would keep body and soul together... His father, known as Old Bob by the neighbours, was a fireman to the pumpingengine at the Wylam colliery, earning not more than twelve shillings a-week. Bob was a lean and gentle man, who took pleasure in telling wonderful stories to the children who ga

thered about his engine-fire of evenings... About his enginefire also, tame robins would gather for the crumbs he spared out of his scanty dinner; for he was a man who loved all kinds of animals, and he would give no better treat to his child George, than to hold him up that he might look at the young blackbirds in their nest.

Little George, when eight years old, carried his father's dinner to the engine, helped to tug about and nurse the children younger than himself and to keep them out of the way of the horses drawing chaldron waggons on the wooden tramroad that ran close before the threshold of the cottage door.

Of course he had not been to school; but he was strong, nimble of body and of wit, and eager to begin the business of bread-winning with the least possible delay. In a neighboring farmhouse lived Grace Ainslie, a widow, whose cows had the right to graze along the waggon road. The post of keeping them out of the way of the waggons, and preventing them from trespassing on other persons' liberties was given to George. He was to have a shilling a week, and his duty was to include barring the gates at night after the waggons had all passed.

That was the beginning of George Stephenson's career, and from it he pushed forward his fortune inch by inch upward. Of course he had certain peculiar abilities; but many may have them, yet few do good with them. George Stephenson made his own fortune, and also added largely to the wealth and general well-being of society. Our purpose is to show how a man may get up the hill of Difficulty, who is content to mount by short, firm steps, keeping his eyes well upon the ground that happens to lie next before his feet.

As watcher of Grace Ainslie's cows, the work of little Geordie Steevie gave him time for play. He became an authority on birds' nests, made whistles of reeds and straws; and, with Tom Tholoway, his chosen playmate, had especial pleasure in the building of little clay engines with the soil of Dewley Bog: hemlock stalks being used to represent steampipes and other apparatus. Any child, whose father's work was to attend an engine, would have played at engines; but, in the case of George Stephenson, it is, nevertheless, a pleasure to the fancy to dwell on the fact that, as a child, he made mudengines and not mud-pies, when playing in the dirt... When his legs were long enough to carry him across the little furrows, little George was promoted to the business of leading horses at the plough, and was trusted also to hoe turnips and to do other farm-work at the advanced wages of two

The coal at Dewley Burn was worked out; and the Stephensons again moved to Jolly's Close, a little row of cottages shut in between steep banks. The family was now helped by the earnings of the children; and, out of the united incomes of its members, made thirty-five shillings or two pounds a-week. But the boys, as they grew older, grew hungrier, and the war with Napoleon was then raising the price of wheat from fiftyfour shillings to one hundred and thirty shillings a quarter. It was still hard to live.

George, at fifteen years old, a big and bony boy, was promoted to the full office of fireman at a new working, the Midmill winning, where he had a young friend, named Bill Coe, for his mate. But the Midmill engine was a very little one, and the nominal increase of dignity was not attended with increase of wages. George's ambition was to attain rank as soon as possible as a full workman, and to earn as good wages as those his father had: twelve shillings a-week... He was steady, sober, indefatigable in his work, ready of wit, and physically strong. It was a great pleasure to him to compete with his associates in lifting heavy weights, throwing the hammer, and putting the stone. He once lifted as much as sixty stone ... Midmill pit being closed, George and his friend Coe were sent to work another pumping engine, fixed near Throchley Bridge. While there, his work was adjudged worthy of a man's hire. One Saturday evening, the foreman paid him twelve shillings for a week's work, and told him that he was, from that date, advanced. When he came out, he told his fellow-workmen his good fortune, and declared in triumph: "Now I am a made man for life."

He had reached inch by inch the natural object of a boy's ambition, to be man enough to do what he has seen done by his father. But he was man enough for more than that. By natural ability joined to unflagging industry he still won his way slowly up; and, at the age of seventeen, worked in a new pit at the same engine with his father; the son taking the higher place as engineman, and Old Bob being still a fireman as he had been from the first.

It was the duty of the engine-man to watch the engine, to correct a certain class of hitches in its working, and, when anything was wrong that he could not put right, to send word to the chief engineer. George Stephenson fell in love with his engine, and was never tired of watching it. In leisure hours, when his companions went to their sports, he took his machine to pieces, cleaned every part of it, and put it together again. Thus he not only kept it in admirable working order, but became

intimately acquainted with all its parts and knew their use. He acquired credit for devotion to his work, and really was devoted to it; at the same time he acquired a kind of knowledge that would help him to get an inch higher in the world. But, there was another kind of knowledge necessary. At the age of eighteen he could not read; he could not write his name. His father had been too poor to afford any schooling to the children. He was then getting his friend Coe to teach him the mystery of brakeing, that he might, when opportunity occurred, advance to the post of brakesman, next above that which he held... He became curious also to know definitely something about the famous engines that were in those days planned by Watt and Bolton. The desire for knowledge taught him the necessity of learning to read books.

The brave young man resolved therefore to learn his letters and make pot-hooks at a night-school among a few colliers' sons, who paid threepence a-week each to a poor teacher at Welbottle.

George was ambitious to save a guinea or two, because he was in love with something better able to return his good-will than a steam-engine. In leisure hours he turned his mechanical dexterity to the business of mending the shoes of his fellowworkmen, and advanced from mending to the making both of shoes and lasts. This addition to his daily twelve hours' labor at the colliery, made some little addition to his weekly earnings. ... It enabled him to save his first guinea, and encouraged him to think the more of marrying Fanny Henderson, a pretty servant in a neighbouring farm-house; sweet-tempered, sensible, and good. He once had shoes of hers to mend, and, as he carried them to her one Sunday evening with a friend he could not help pulling them out of his pocket every now and then to admire them because they were hers, and to bid his companion observe what a capital job he had made of them. At the age of twenty-one, he signed his name in the register of Newburn Church as the husband of Fanny Henderson.

At Killingworth, when they had been but two or three years married, Fanny died. Soon after her death, leaving his little boy in charge of a neighbour, he marched on foot into Scotland; for he had been invited to Montrose to superintend the working of one of Bolton and Watt's engines.

It was a slight advance in independence, although no advance in fortune, when Stephenson, at the age of twenty-seven, joined two other brakesmen in taking a small contract under

the lessees for brakeing the engines at the West Moor pit. The profits did not always bring him in a pound a-week. His little son, Robert, was growing up, and he was bent firmly on giving him what he himself had lacked: the utmost attainable benefit of education in his boyhood... Therefore George spent his nights in mending clocks and watches for his neighbours, mended and made shoes, cut out lasts, even cut out the pitmen's clothes for their wives to make up, and worked at their embroidery. He turned every spare minute to account, and so wrung, from a stubborn fortune, power to give the first rudiments of education to his son.

At last there came a day when all the cleaning and dissecting of his engines turned to profit, and the clock-doctor won the more important character of engine-doctor. He had on various occasions suggested to the owners small contrivances which had saved wear and tear of material, or otherwise improved the working of his pit... When he was twenty-nine years old, a new pit was sunk at Killingworth, over which a Newcomen engine was fixed for the purpose of pumping water from the shaft. For some reason the engine failed; as one of the workmen engaged on it tells the case, “she couldn't keep her jack-head in water; all the engine men in the neighbourhood were tried, as well as Crowther of the Ouseburn, but they were clean bet." The engine pumped to no purpose for nearly twelve months. Stephenson had observed, when he saw it built, that if there was much water in the mine, that engine wouldn't keep it under, but to the opinion of a common brakesman no heed had been paid... He used often to inquire as to "how she was getting on," and the answer always was, that the men were still "drowned out." One Saturday afternoon, George went to the pit, and made a close examination of the whole machine. Kit Heppel, sinker at the pit, said to him when he had done, "Weel, George, what do you mak' o' her? Do you think you could do anything to improve her?" "Man," said George, "I could alter her and make her draw. week's time from this I could send you to the bottom."

In a

The conversation was reported to Ralph Dods, the head viewer. George was known to be an ingenious and determined fellow and, as Dods said, "the engineers hereabouts are all bet." The brakesman, therefore, was at once allowed to try his skill: he could not make matters worse than they were, and he might mend them... He was set to work at once, picked his own men to carry out the alterations he thought necessary, took the whole engine to pieces, reconstructed it, and really did, in a week's time after his talk with Heppel, clear the pit