Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/117

 faulty construction, for she was the fruitful mother of a race of giants! It was reserved for the engineers of a later generation to clothe Stephenson's great idea in forms of beauty and of strength, and they are entitled to all credit for the- perfection they have attained; but immeasurably greater must be the fame of him whose master-mind first gave the great conception to the world, with all its infinite possibilities of development for the advancement and happiness of mankind. His achievement can only be rivalled, and can hardly be eclipsed, by the genius of the man, perhaps yet unborn, who may endow the human race with a new faculty, by teaching them to navigate the air with the same ease with which they now traverse the ocean and the land.

It is extremely interesting to turn back to the reports of the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, in 1826, and for some few years after, when the plan for working railways by means of locomotives was still hardly out of the region of experiment, and was not yet freed from a great deal of hostile and sceptical criticism. Thus we find them writing on the 27th March, 1828, when the railway was under construction and the works were well advanced:—

"The nature of the power to be used for the conveyance of goods and passengers becomes now a question of great moment, on whatever principle the carrying department may be conducted. After due consideration, the engineer has been authorised to prepare a locomotive engine which, from the nature of its construction and from the experiments already made, he is of opinion will be effective for the purposes of the Company without proving an annoyance to the public. In the course of the ensuing summer