Mr. Stephenson never ceased to inveigh against it; and experience has
amply proved that his judgment was correct. His practice, from the
beginning of his career until the end of it, was to secure a road as
nearly as possible on a level, following the course of the valleys and
the natural line of the country: preferring to go round a hill rather
than to tunnel under it or carry his railway over it, and often making a
considerable circuit to secure good, workable gradients. He studied to
lay out his lines so that long trains of minerals and merchandise, as
well as passengers, might be hauled along them at the least possible
expenditure of locomotive power. He had long before ascertained, by
careful experiments at Killingworth, that the engine expends half of its
power in overcoming a rising gradient of 1 in 260, which is about 20 feet
in the mile; and that when the gradient is so steep as 1 in 100, not less
than three-fourths of its power is sacrificed in ascending the acclivity.
He never forgot the valuable practical lesson taught him by the early
trials which he had made and registered long before the advantages of
railways had been recognised. He saw clearly that the longer flat line
must eventually prove superior to the shorter line of steep gradients as
respected its paying qualities. He urged that, after all, the power of
the locomotive was but limited; and, although he and his son had done
more than any other men to increase its working capacity, it provoked him
to find that every improvement made in it was neutralised by the steep
gradients which the new school of engineers were setting it to overcome.
On one occasion, when Robert Stephenson stated before a Parliamentary
Committee that every successive improvement in the locomotive was being
rendered virtually nugatory by the difficult and almost impracticable
gradients proposed on many of the new lines, his father, on his leaving
the witness-box, went up to him, and said, "Robert, you never spoke truer
words than those in all your life."

To this it must be added, that in urging these views Mr. Stephenson was
strongly influenced by commercial considerations. He had no desire to
build up his reputation at the expense of railway shareholders, nor to
obtain engineering _eclat_ by making "ducks and drakes" of their money.
He was persuaded that, in order to secure the practical success of
railways, they must be so laid out as not only to prove of decided public
u