judgment.
Shortly after six next morning Stephenson was in Scott Russell's
building-yard, and he remained there until dusk. About midday, while
superintending the launching operations, the baulk of timber on which he
stood canted up, and he fell up to his middle in the Thames mud. He was
dressed as usual, without great-coat (though the day was bitter cold),
and with only thin boots upon his feet. He was urged to leave the yard,
and change his dress, or at least dry himself; but with his usual
disregard of health, he replied, "Oh, never mind me--I'm quite used to
this sort of thing;" and he went paddling about in the mud, smoking his
cigar, until almost dark, when the day's work was brought to an end. The
result of this exposure was an attack of inflammation of the lungs, which
kept him to his bed for a fortnight.

He was habitually careless of his health, and perhaps he indulged in
narcotics to a prejudicial extent. Hence he often became "hipped" and
sometimes ill. When Mr. Sopwith accompanied him to Egypt in the
_Titania_, in 1856, he succeeded in persuading Mr. Stephenson to limit
his indulgence in cigars and stimulants, and the consequence was that by
the end of the voyage he felt himself, as he said, "quite a new man."
Arrived at Marseilles, he telegraphed from thence a message to Great
George Street, prescribing certain stringent and salutary rules for
observance in the office there on his return. But he was of a facile,
social disposition, and the old associations proved too strong for him.
When he sailed for Norway, in the autumn of 1859, though then ailing in
health, he looked a man who had still plenty of life in him. By the time
he returned, his fatal illness had seized him. He was attacked by
congestion of the liver, which first developed itself in jaundice, and
then ran into dropsy, of which he died on the 12th October, in the
fifty-sixth year of his age. {368} He was buried by the side of Telford
in Westminster Abbey, amidst the departed great men of his country, and
was attended to his resting-place by many of the intimate friends of his
boyhood and his manhood. Among those who assembled round his grave were
some of the greatest men of thought and action in England, who embraced
the sad occasion to pay the last mark of their respect to this
illustrious son of one of England's greatest working men.

[Picture: Robert Stephenson's Burial-place in Westminster Abbey]

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