s for us a
singular and exceptional interest. It was a statue of George
Stephenson, to be erected at Liverpool. Thus, by a curious
coincidence, the Liverpool stone-cutter was set to immortalize the
features and figure of the Killingworth engine-man. Did those two
great men, as they sat together in one room, sculptor and sitter, know
one another's early history and strange struggles, we wonder? Perhaps
not; but if they did, it must surely have made a bond of union between
them. At any rate, Gibson greatly admired Stephenson, just as he had
admired the Stelvio road. "I will endeavour to give him a look capable
of action and energy," he said; "but he must be contemplative, grave,
simple. He is a good subject. I wish to make him look like an
Archimedes."

If Gibson admired Stephenson, however, he did not wholly admire
Stephenson's railways. The England he had left was the England of
mail-coaches. In Italy, he had learnt to travel by carriage, after the
fashion of the country; but these new whizzing locomotives, with their
time-tables, and their precision, and their inscrutable mysteries of
shunts and junctions, were quite too much for his simple, childish,
old-world habits. He had a knack of getting out too soon or too late,
which often led him into great confusion. Once, when he wanted to go to
Chichester, he found himself landed at Portsmouth, and only discovered
his mistake when, on asking the way to the cathedral, he was told there
was no cathedral in the town at all. Another story of how he tried to
reach Wentworth, Lord Fitzwilliam's place, is best told in his own
words. "The train soon stopped at a small station, and, seeing some
people get out, I also descended; when, in a moment, the train moved
on--faster and faster--and left me standing on the platform. I walked
a few paces backward and forward in disagreeable meditation. 'I wish
to Heaven,' thought I to myself, 'that I was on my way back to Rome
with a postboy.' Then I observed a policeman darting his eyes upon me,
as if he would look me through. Said I to the fellow, 'Where is that
cursed train gone to? It's off with my luggage and here am I.' The
man asked me the name of the place where I took my ticket. 'I don't
remember,' said I. 'How should I know the name of any of these
places?--it's as long as my arm. I've got it written down somewhere.'
'Pray, sir,' said the man, after a little pause, 'are you a foreigner?'
'No,' I replied, 'I am n