mend itself. One of these, whose eldest brother had just succeeded to an earldom, said to a railway manager, "I like railways -they just suit young fellows like me, with 'nothing per annum paid quarterly.' You know, we can't afford to post, and it used to be deuced annoying to me, as I was jogging along on the boxseat of the stage-coach, to see the little earl go by, drawn by his four posters, and just look up at me and give me a nod. But now, with railways, it's different. It's true, he may take a firstclass ticket, while I can only afford a second-class one, but we both go the same pace."

For a time, however, many of the old families sent forward their servants and luggage by railroad, and condemned themselves to jog along the old highway in the accustomed family chariot, dragged by country post-horses. But the superior comfort of the railway shortly recommended itself to even the oldest families; posting went out of date; post-horses were with difficulty to be had along even the great high roads; and nobles and servants, manufacturers and peasants, alike shared in the comfort, the convenience, and the dispatch of railway traveling. The late Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, regarded the opening of the London and Birmingham line as another great step accomplished in the march of civilization. "I rejoice to see it," he said, as he stood on one of the bridges over the railway, and watched the train flashing along under him, and away through the distant hedgerows-"I rejoice to see it, and to think that feudality is gone forever it is so great a blessing to think that any one evil is really extinct."

It was long before the late Duke of Wellington would trust himself behind a locomotive. The fatal accident to Mr. Huskisson, which had happened before his eyes, contributed to prejudice him strongly against railways, and it was not until the year 1843 that he performed his first trip on the Southwestern Railway, in attendance upon her majesty. Prince Albert had for some time been accustomed to travel by railway alone, but in 1842 the queen began to make use of the same mode of conveyance between Windsor and London. Even Colonel Sibthorpe was eventually compelled to acknowledge its utility. For a time he continued. to post to and from the country as before. Then he compromised the matter by taking a railway ticket for the long journey,

CHAP. XV.] SIBTHORPE ON THE "INFERNAL RAILROAD."

391

and posting only a stage or two nearest town; until, at length, he undisguisedly committed himself, like other people, to the express train, and performed the journey throughout upon what he had formerly denounced as "the infernal railroad."

GEORGE STEPHENSON'S COAL-MINES-APPEARS AT MECHANICS' INSTITUTES HIS OPINION ON RAILWAY SPEEDS- -ATMOSPHERIC SYSTEM -RAILWAY MANIA-VISITS TO BELGIUM AND SPAIN.

WHILE George Stephenson was engaged in carrying on the works of the Midland Railway in the neighborhood of Chesterfield, several seams of coal were cut through in the Claycross Tunnel, when it occurred to him that if mines were opened out there, the railway would provide the means of a ready sale for the article in the midland counties, and even as far south as the metropolis itself.

At a time when every body else was skeptical as to the possibility of coals being carried from the midland counties to London, and sold there at a price to compete with those which were sea-borne, he declared his firm conviction that the time was fast approaching when the London market would be regularly supplied with North-country coals led by railway. One of the great advantages of railways, in his opinion, was that they would bring iron and coal, the staple products of the country, to the doors of all England. "The strength of Britain," he would say, "lies in

CHAP. XVI.] GEORGE STEPHENSON ON COAL LINES.

393

her iron and coal beds, and the locomotive is destined, above all other agencies, to bring it forth. The lord chancellor now sits upon a bag of wool; but wool has long since ceased to be emblematical of the staple commodity of England. He ought rather to sit upon a bag of coals, though it might not prove quite so comfortable a seat. Then think of the lord chancellor being addressed as the noble and learned lord on the coal-sack! afraid it wouldn't answer, after all."

I am

To one gentleman he said: "We want from the coal-mining, the iron-producing and manufacturing districts, a great railway for the carriage of these valuable products. We want, if I may so say, a stream of steam running directly through the country from the North to London. Speed is not so much an object as utility and cheapness. It will not do to mix up the heavy merchandise and coal-trains with the passenger-trains. Coal and most kinds of goods can wait, but passengers will not. A less perfect road and less expensive works will do well enough for coal-trains, if run at a low speed; and if the line be flat, it is not of much consequence whether it be direct or not. Whenever you put passenger-trains on a line, all the other trains must be run at high speeds to keep out of their way. But coal-trains run at high speeds pull the road to pieces, besides causing large expenditure in locomotive power; and I doubt very much whether they will pay, after all; but a succession of long coal-trains, if run at from ten to fourteen miles an hour, would pay very well. Thus the Stockton and Darlington Company made a larger profit when running coal at low speeds at a halfpenny a ton per mile, than they have been able to do since they put on their fast passenger-trains, when every thing must needs be run faster, and a much larger proportion of the gross receipts is consequently absorbed by working expenses."

In advocating these views, George Stephenson was considerably ahead of his time; and although he did not live to see his anticipations fully realized as to the supply of the London coalmarket, he was nevertheless the first to point it out, and to some extent to prove, the practicability of establishing a profitable coal-trade by railway between the northern counties and the metropolis. So long, however, as the traffic was conducted on main passenger-lines at comparatively high speeds, it was found that

the expenditure on tear and wear of road and locomotive power -not to mention the increased risk of carrying on the first-class passenger traffic with which it was mixed up-necessarily left a very small margin of profit, and hence our engineer was in the habit of urging the propriety of constructing a railway which should be exclusively devoted to goods and mineral traffic run at low speeds as the only condition on which a large railway traffic of that sort could be profitably conducted.

Having induced some of his Liverpool friends to join him in a coal-mining adventure at Chesterfield, a lease was taken of the Claycross estate, then for sale, and operations were shortly after begun. At a subsequent period Stephenson extended his coalmining operations in the same neighborhood, and in 1841 he himself entered into a contract with owners of land in the townships of Tapton, Brimington, and Newbold for the working of the coal thereunder, and pits were opened on the Tapton estate on an extensive scale. About the same time he erected great lime-works, close to the Ambergate station of the Midland Railway, from which, when in full operation, he was able to turn out upward of two hundred tons a day. The limestone was brought on a tramway from the village of Crich, about two or three miles distant from the kilns, the coal being supplied from his adjoining Claycross Colliery. The works were on a scale such as had not be