. At last, on the 12th
of August, 1848, he died suddenly of intermittent fever, in his
sixty-seventh year, and was peacefully buried in Chesterfield church.
Probably no one man who ever lived did so much to change and renovate
the whole aspect of human life as George Stephenson; and, unlike many
other authors of great revolutions, he lived long enough to see the
full result of his splendid labours in the girdling of England by his
iron roads. A grand and simple man, he worked honestly and steadfastly
throughout his days, and he found his reward in the unprecedented
benefits which his locomotive was even then conferring upon his
fellow-men. It is indeed wonderful to think how very different is the
England in which we live to-day, from that in which we might possibly
have been living were it not for the barefooted little collier boy who
made clay models of engines at Wylam, and who grew at last into the
great and famous engineer of the marvellous Liverpool and Manchester
railway. The main characteristic of George Stephenson was
perseverance; and it was that perseverance that enabled him at last to
carry out his magnificent schemes in the face of so much bitter and
violent opposition.

III.

JOHN GIBSON, SCULPTOR.

In most cases, the working man who raises himself to wealth and
position, does so by means of trade, which is usually the natural
outgrowth of his own special handicraft or calling. If he attains, not
only to riches, but to distinction as well, it is in general by
mechanical talent, the direction of the mind being naturally biased by
the course of one's own ordinary occupations. England has been
exceptionally rich in great engineers and inventive geniuses of such
humble origin--working men who have introduced great improvements in
manufactures or communications; and our modern English civilization has
been immensely influenced by the lives of these able and successful
mechanical toilers. From Brindley, the constructor of the earliest
great canal, to Joseph Gillott, the inventor of the very steel pen with
which this book is written; from Arkwright the barber who fashioned the
first spinning-machine, to Crompton the weaver, whose mule gave rise to
the mighty Manchester cotton trade; from Newcomen, who made the first
rough attempt at a steam-engine, to Stephenson, who sent the iron horse
from end to end of the land,--the chief mechanical improvements in the
country have almost all been due to the e