fathers and the sons were alike
successful in their works, though not in the same degree. Measured by
practical and profitable results, the Stephensons were unquestionably the
safer men to follow.

Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel were destined often to come
into collision in the course of their professional life. Their
respective railway districts "marched" with each other, and it became
their business to invade or defend those districts, according as the
policy of their respective boards might direct. The gauge of 7 feet
fixed by Mr. Brunel for the Great Western Railway, so entirely different
from that of 4ft. 8.5in. adopted by the Stephensons on the Northern and
Midland lines, was from the first a great cause of contention. But Mr.
Brunel had always an aversion to follow any man's lead; and that another
engineer had fixed the gauge of a railway, or built a bridge, or designed
an engine, in one way, was of itself often a sufficient reason with him
for adopting an altogether different course. Robert Stephenson, on his
part, though less bold, was more practical, preferring to follow the old
routes, and to tread in the safe steps of his father.

Mr. Brunel, however, determined that the Great Western should be a
giant's road, and that travelling should be conducted upon it at double
speed. His ambition was to make the _best_ road that imagination could
devise; whereas the main object of the Stephensons, both father and son,
was to make a road that would _pay_. Although, tried by the Stephenson
test, Brunel's magnificent road was a failure so far as the shareholders
in the Great Western Company were concerned, the stimulus which his
ambitious designs gave to mechanical invention at the time proved a
general good. The narrow-gauge engineers exerted themselves to quicken
their locomotives to the utmost. They improved and re-improved them; the
machinery was simplified and perfected; outside cylinders gave place to
inside; the steadier and more rapid and effective action of the engine
was secured; and in a few years the highest speed on the narrow-gauge
lines went up from 30 to about 50 miles an hour. For this rapidity of
progress we are in no small degree indebted to the stimulus imparted to
the narrow-gauge engineers by Mr. Brunel. And it is well for a country
that it should possess men such as he, ready to dare the untried, and to
venture boldly into new paths. Individuals may suffer from the cost