sting after premiums, rushed eagerly
into the vortex. They applied for allotments, and subscribed for shares
in lines, of the engineering character or probable traffic of which they
knew nothing. Provided they could but obtain allotments which they could
sell at a premium, and put the profit--in many cases the only capital
they possessed {289}--into their pocket, it was enough for them. The
mania was not confined to the precincts of the Stock Exchange, but
infected all ranks. It embraced merchants and manufacturers, gentry and
shopkeepers, clerks in public offices, and loungers at the clubs. Noble
lords were pointed at as "stags;" there were even clergymen who were
characterised as "bulls;" and amiable ladies who had the reputation of
"bears," in the share markets. The few quiet men who remained
uninfluenced by the speculation of the time were, in not a few cases,
even reproached for doing injustice to their families, in declining to
help themselves from the stores of wealth that were poured out on all
sides.

Folly and knavery were, for a time, completely in the ascendant. The
sharpers of society were let loose, and jobbers and schemers became more
and more plentiful. They threw out railway schemes as lures to catch the
unwary. They fed the mania with a constant succession of new projects.
The railway papers became loaded with their advertisements. The
post-office was scarcely able to distribute the multitude of prospectuses
and circulars which they issued. For a time their popularity was
immense. They rose like froth into the upper heights of society, and the
flunkey FitzPlushe, by virtue of his supposed wealth, sat amongst peers
and was idolised. Then was the harvest-time of scheming lawyers,
parliamentary agents, engineers, surveyors, and traffic-takers, who were
ready to take up any railway scheme however desperate, and to prove any
amount of traffic even where none existed. The traffic in the credulity
of their dupes was, however, the great fact that mainly concerned them,
and of the profitable character of which there could be no doubt.

Mr. Stephenson was anxiously entreated to lend his name to prospectuses
during the railway mania; but he invariably refused. He held aloof from
the headlong folly of the hour, and endeavoured to check it, but in vain.
Had he been less scrupulous, and given his countenance to the numerous
projects about which he was consulted, he might, without any trouble,
have th