THE SIN OF GEHAZI.-In Donne's Sermons | places in Scotland having the prefix In, such as (vol. i. 275, Alford), there occurs the following: "Simon Magus gave the name to a Sin, and so did Gehazi, and Sodom did so. To what sin did Gehazi give name? I have Bought in vain in the various books of references within my reach. J. EASTWOOD. -Notes and Queries.

(Mur

From The Athenæum. dian over a neighbor's cows,- -a service The Life of George Stephenson, Railway which was munificently remunerated at 2d. Engineer. By Samuel Smiles. per day. The child thus early experienced the inexpressible enjoyment of "earning his bread." Sweet is the produce of labor, though it be but 2d. per day gained as a cowherd.

WE will not undertake to assert who was the actually original author of the remark, that infancy and old age are the two points of life which are nearest to heaven. We While he had his eye upon the cows, he will, however, undertake to say that the modelled clay engines, and nourished in his assertion itself is not strictly true. Man is young heart the modest ambition of being nearest to God when he is godlike, be he of employed, as his father was, in some colliery. what age he may. When he has groped But this envied position was only reached by through the darkness of the world, mastered slow degrees. He had first to be a hoer of any one of the great mysteries which he had turnips at 4d. per day, and a clearer of coal honestly resolved to unveil, and so employed from stones and dross at 6d. a day, beforethe gift of intellect as to have become worthy at the age of fourteen-he was promoted to of being used as an instrument of divine be assistant to his honest old father, at Dowpurposes, then is the man nearest to Divin- lay, at 1s. per day. All the children were ity. What more sublime lot can human by this time little bread-winners, and the being enjoy than that of having won a place family income sometimes rose to £2 per among the brotherhood of men who have, as week; but that was during years when the it were helped the world on in its course? price of wheat ranged from 75s. to 130s. per To be worthy of being registered in such a quarter. Nevertheless, George must have brotherhood, the man must have more than had nourishing food, or he never could have ordinary intelligence, and therewith untiring performed the feat of raising sixty stones industry-a heart that cannot be deadened weight, or perhaps his requirements were by labor, nor chilled by failure-and a head small; for, being appointed plugman at 12s. that shall forever keep up the proud pulses a week, the boy broke forth with the shout, of the heart by promise of ultimate triumph. I am now a made man for life! A very He who possesses all these is only below the few years later, when he had saved his first angels. He is in advance of his fellow men; guinea, he looked at it with honest joy, and in this position was George Stephenson, and exclaimed, "I am now a rich man!" who, according to the "rechester" in the It is of such stuff that your hero is comfamily Bible of his father-the firemen at posed. the old pumping-engine of the colliery at Wylam, near Newcastle," was Born June 9 day, 1781."

66

He could not read, even his letters, but he imitated every thing. He loved the engine which he now had to tend, as a Mahratta George was the second of six children, two cannoneer loves his " gun." It was a pleasof whom were daughters. The parents sure to him to keep it clean, bright, and in "belonged to the ancient and honorable thorough working gear. He speedily rose family of the workers." The father was above his father, as which his sire was as never any thing more than a humble proud as an old sexton might be who sees his laborer, with a love for Nature and a fund son in a curacy. His strong intellect was of capital stories, which brought an audi- forever at work on the subject of engines. ence of children of various growths about Then came the necessity for book-learning, him and his engine-fire. The mother was a and George went humbly to a night school "rale canny body," which, in Northumbria, and learned reading, writing, and arithmeis the highest compliment that can be paid tic, till he not only had outstripped the to woman. The early duties of George were adult class, but had exhausted his master. to run on village errands, to nurse his Therewith, he was no absentee from manly younger brothers and sisters, and to see that sports. He played, as he worked, heartily; they did not get run over by the horse drawn drank little, read much, thought more, coal-waggons on the wooden railway in front of the cottage. At eight years of age, he was promoted to be the same sort of guar

soundly thrashed a pugilistic collier bully,although George was the most inoffensive of good fellows; and finally, having become

"brakesman," and being in receipt of nearly worth for a while, went a-foot into Scotland a pound a week, with a conviction that in in search of work, and returned heart-sore brain his "banks were well furnished," he to be near his boy. He came back to find his did exactly what he ought to have done,-he father blind and helpless, but George took fell in love with sweet-tempered, modest, him to his poor house, and in order to supsensible, and bonny-looking Fanny Hender- port his parents and to procure a good eduson. He soled her shoes. Do not smile cation for his motherless child he spent a superciliously, O reader! Our worker had portion of the nights which followed days of learned the gentle craft in his leisure hours, labor, in mending clocks and watches, in and turned it to pecuniary account. But making shoes and lasts, and in cutting out do you suppose when he had soled the little suits of clothes which the colliers' wives shoes of charming Fanny Henderson that he made up for their husbands. "Geordy returned them to her with or without his Stevie's cut" is not yet out of fashion in the little account? Not he? The honest-hearted district of Killingworth. Altogether, these lover put them into his bosom; warmed them were very hard times. He had even to purat his manly breast; took them out to gaze chase a substitute for the milita, for which upon, perhaps, -nay, assuredly, to kiss he was drawn, when substitutes were at warthem; and held them aloft with the signifi- prices: but his heart never failed him. cant and self-congratulatory remark, that it "Perseverance" was his device and princiwas a capital job!" And so it proved. ple, and that and endurance purchased him The brakesman, now of Willington Quay, a richly compensating triumph. The ropes furnished a cottage, married Fanny at New- at the pit where he was employed as brakesburn Church, in 1802; and rode proudly man wore out rapidly, and he invented a home fifteen miles on horseback with young remedy to prevent this wear. Engines beMrs. George Stephenson behind him on a came crippled and powerless, and when he pillion. They had a magnificent escort with suggested means for both prevention and them; God's angels and heavenly blessings cure, official and helpless engineers sneered were about and about them. at, and were obliged to have recourse to, For see; soon in that humble but happy him. For one invaluable service in rendercottage, there is a busy mother, and a studi- ing efficiency to an engine that had been ous father with a child at his side, scattering pronounced incurable, he received sunshine by his smiles. However, accidents guineas, promotion with increase of wages, of course visit them; and their cottage is and promise of future advantages. To & damaged by fire, and still more by water, squad of engineers "drownded out" of a and soot and smoke. George looked round coal-pit, he said he could erect a thing no at the devastation and characteristically be- bigger than a kail-pot that should clear the gan his repairs by setting the eight-day pit. He kept his word, and they accounted clock to rights! The steam and the soot had him a wizard. And the opinion seemed well clogged the wheels, and Stephenson was un- founded, for his cottage was crowded with easy till he had once more set the machine in models, plans, drawings, and diagrams; and motion. He did this, however, so well that he had, moreover (for he could turn his mind he soon was widely employed as the best to any thing), put all the cradles in the dis"clock doctor in the country." He left trict in connection with their respective that part of it in 1804 to proceed to West smoke-jacks, and thus made them self-acting. Moor, Killingworth, seven miles north of He had besides contrived to save a hundred Newcastle. There his employers recognized guineas. If all this was not wizard's work, his qualities as a practical workman and in- what was it? Well, it was the simple result ventor. There he laid the broad foundation of "Perseverance." And another result of his lofty renown, and there commences a was his appointment at Killingworth colliery new period in his eventful and honorable as "engine-wright," at £100 a year. He history. was now fairly on his way to "revolutionize But sorrow came before renown. The by his improvements and inventions the insunlight of his house was taken from him, ternal communications of the civilized and with the death of his wife darkness cov- world." He hardly looked so far himself, ered his hearth. He abandoned Killing- but it was not long before his great mind

ten

It

The controversy

fies to the decidedly superior safety of the Geordy."

looked to great ends, and prophesied their | thereby as it was by the victory of the same accomplishment. Sagacious men listened, year on the plains of Mont St.-Jean. wondered, and were disposed to believe. was, indeed, a year of double triumph to Matter-of-fact men shook their heads and Stephenson, for it was then that he produced doubted. Conceited men charged him with his safety-lamp for miners. He was a little conceit, and thought him a fool. before Sir Humphry Davy, though the BaThere was a time, in the days Cardinal ronet's lamp was found to be something more Richelieu, when gay French sight-seers used perfect than what was called "the invention, to repair to the madhouse near Paris to see claimed by a person, an engine-wright, of Solomon de Caus, who was shut up there, for the name of Stephenson.' boring to death, his family, friends, and the about the lamps has gone out, leaving to the Government with the assertion that ships mechanic and the philosopher their respecmight be navigated and carriages moved by tive dues; but at Killingworth the men conthe steam of boiling water. Keepers and tinue to prefer the ." Geordy" to the visitors held their sides with laughter as they "Davy." "It is worthy of remark,' says heard poor Solomon repeat his conviction. Mr. Smiles, "that under circumstances in In the next hundred and fifty years, although which the wire-gauze of the Davy lamp beWatt had, by adding his own ideas to those comes red-hot from the high explosiveness of of many illustrious predecessors, rendered the gas, the Geordy lamp is extinguished, practically useful the "steam of boiling and we cannot but think that this fact testiwater," locomotives were yet unknown. Many improvements had to be made in the old, short, and primitive railways along which coal was "hauled " by horse-power, before Mr. Outram, in 1800, used stone props instead of timber for supporting the ends and joinings of the rails. The Outram, or (according to the fashion by which we call a popular thing by the head or tail of its name) the tram road was pretty generally adopted, and though railway waggons still continued to be drawn by horses, various deep-thinking men began to talk of conveying passengers as well as goods, and that by locomotive power. The experiments were many and so were the failures, but even these taught something. Stephenson was the first to realize the great fact, accomplishing for the locomotive what James Watt had done for the steam-engine. Lord Ravensworth (1813) supplied him with money for building the first locomotive. People called Lord Ravensworth "a fool: "-Stephenson built his engine, and called it "My Lord." It drew eighty-tons weight, at four miles an hour, and was about as dear as horsepower. So you see, nothing has been gained, remarked the scientific people. Everything has been gained, said Stephenson, who saw what was wanted, and inventing the "steam blast," as the simple process is called, by a turn of his magic, doubled his speed, and made at once practicable all that has since been realized. This was in 1815, and the world was as thoroughly revolutionized

When Stephenson talked of accomplishing high rates of speed by locomotives upon railways-not in his time, perhaps, but years after he was dead (he lived to see it all), he was told that iron was incapable of adhesion upon iron, and that roughness of surface was essential to produce "bite." He thought it over, communed with himself and his son, made sundials and other scientific toys while he was thinking, and married Elizabeth Hindmarsh, a farmer's daughter. He sent his son to Edinburgh University, and had the joy of seeing him bring back, in six months, the prize for mathematics. He worked incessantly, persevered in the track of his old thoughts, saw light, made use of it, got among men of enterprise, money, and larger views, and persuaded them that he was not so visionary a mechanic as he was accounted by many great philosophers, and a number of persons who thought themselves qualified to judge as well as the philosophers, who were indeed no judges at all.

Great wants produce, under certain circumstances, great and desired ends. Manchester was always wanting her cotton of Liverpool, but the two cities combined, canals, roads and all, had not means of transit to supply the demand. Cotton, destined for Manchester, lay longer at Liverpool than it had taken to come across the Atlantic. The manufacturers were often in despair, the operatives as often in idleness, want and dis

content. A railroad would remedy all this, I thought, and the railway proprietors felt, but the dream of effecting more than this that coal could not be carried at such a price was not very fondly indulged in. Stephen- without great loss, if not ruin. But the son was consulted, for his name, and his great free-trader, turned Protectionist in his engine, and his engine's name at Killing- own behalf, was exquisitely shortsighted. worth had given him a dignity and reputa- The railway proprietors were, in their turn, tion which made of him an indispensable agreeably disappointed. They had only person in such a novel process. And what looked to a limited coal-carrying; but when a time of it the surveyors had; how road they found themselves, in course of time, trustees cursed them, how aristocratic canal- called upon to carry half a million tons anproprietors damned them, how landlords nually to the sea-side, they saw with equal hooted them, how farmers jeered them, how surprise and pleasure that the profits were peasants pelted them, how the very women large, and that the low rate had had exactly and children assailed them with words and the opposite effect to what had been contemother missiles! The assistants were mobbed plated by the patriotic Mr. Lambton. And and roughly treated; the chainman was better still,threatened with being thrown into a pit; sticks and guns were presented at the man who held that terrible and detested mystery, the theodolite; and when he could be caught at advantage clambering over a stile or gate, the savage rustics helped him over by pricking him behind with a pitchfork.

The opposition was, for a time, too strong for the proprietors, and the scheme for a railway between Manchester and Liverpool was temporarily suspended. Meanwhile, Mr. Pease had seen Stephenson's engine at work at Killingworth, and the result was, not only the appointment of the latter to the office of engineer to the "Quakers' line," the Stockton and Darlington Railway, at a salary of £300 a year, but Mr. Pease entered into partnership with him for the establishment of a locomotive foundry at Newcastle. Thus the mechanic became a master of men. He was a kind yet firm master. He respected the men's manhood, and they respected his masterhood.

"The anticipations of the company as to passenger traffic were in like manner more than realised. At first, passengers were not thought of; and it was only while the works were in progress that the starting of a pas old stage coach, called the senger coach was seriously considered. An Queen Charlotte,' was purchased at a bargain, and mounted on a wooden frame. This was the entire passenger stock of the Stockton and Darlington line on the day of opening, and for some time afterwards. The number of persons then travelling between the two was not known whether these might be distowns was indeed very inconsiderable, and it posed to entrust their persons on the iron road. Mr. Stephenson, however, urged that the experiment of a stage coach was worthy of a trial; and so the Queen Charlotte' was purchased and mounted. The name of the coach was to be altered, and Mr. Stephenson her. was asked what he thought they should call

The Expurriment,' said he, in his strong Northumbrian tongue; and the coach was renamed 'The Experiment' accordingly. She had also emblazoned on her pannels the the company's arms, bearing the motto of Periculum privatum utilitas publica.''

Out of all this sprang the town of Middlesborough-on-Tees. We remember the time, in 1825, when only one farm-house stood upon the spot, around which has spread the future metropolis of Cleveland, with a population already approaching to 20,000.

The line was opened for traffic in 1825. The first trip comprised coals, flour, and 250 living persons. There were thirty-eight vehicles in all, the whole weight being about ninety tons. "Mr. Stephenson" drove the engine, and local chroniclers were more out of breath than the locomotive, at recording its occasional pace of ten miles an hour! The Earl of Durham, then Mr. Lambton, Then came the renewal of the Manchester looking sharply to his own profit, had forced and Liverpool project. It was very unaca clause into the Bill for the regulation of ceptable to canal proprietors, some of whom this line, whereby the proprietors were com- had been annually receiving, for half-a-cenpelled to haul all coals to Stockton for ship- tury, the whole amount of their original ment at a halfpenny a ton per mile. This investment! Stephenson was at the head low rate was fixed in order to protect his of the survey, and he and his men were own coal shipped from Sunderland. He treated as rogues and vagabonds by resident