tility, but also to be worked economically and to the advantage of their
proprietors. They were not government roads, but private ventures--in
fact, commercial speculations. He therefore endeavoured to render them
financially profitable; and he repeatedly declared that if he did not
believe they could be "made to pay," he would have nothing to do with
them. He was not influenced by the sordid consideration of what he could
_make_ out of any company that employed him; indeed, in many cases he
voluntarily gave up his claim to remuneration where the promoters of
schemes which he thought praiseworthy had suffered serious loss. Thus,
when the first application was made to Parliament for the Chester and
Birkenhead Railway Bill, the promoters were defeated. They repeated
their application, on the understanding that in event of their
succeeding, the engineer and surveyor were to be paid their costs in
respect of the defeated measure. The Bill was successful, and to several
parties their costs were paid. Mr. Stephenson's amounted to 800 pounds,
and he very nobly said, "You have had an expensive career in Parliament;
you have had a great struggle; you are a young Company; you cannot afford
to pay me this amount of money. I will reduce it to 200 pounds, and I
will not ask you for that 200 pounds until your shares are at 20 pounds
premium: for whatever may be the reverses you will go through, I am
satisfied I shall live to see the day when your shares will be at 20
pounds premium, and when I can legally and honourably claim that 200
pounds." We may add that the shares did eventually rise to the premium
specified, and the engineer was no loser by his generous conduct in the
transaction.

Another novelty of the time, with which George Stephenson had to contend,
was the substitution of atmospheric pressure for locomotive steam-power
in the working of railways. The idea of obtaining motion by means of
atmospheric pressure is said to have originated with Denis Papin, more
than 150 years ago; but it slept until revived in 1810 by Mr. Medhurst,
who published a pamphlet to prove the practicability of carrying letters
and goods by air. In 1824, Mr. Vallance of Brighton took out a patent
for projecting passengers through a tube large enough to contain a train
of carriages; the tube being previously exhausted of its atmospheric air.
The same idea was afterwards taken up, in 1835, by Mr. Pinkus, an
ingenious American. Scientific gen