e; and for years after he had
completed an efficient engine he went on quietly devoting himself to the
ordinary work of the colliery. He made no noise nor stir about his
locomotive, but allowed another to take credit for the experiments on
velocity and friction made with it by himself upon the Killingworth
railroad.

By patient industry and laborious contrivance, he was enabled, with the
powerful help of his son, to do for the locomotive what James Watt had
done for the condensing engine. He found it clumsy and inefficient; and
he made it powerful, efficient, and useful. Both have been described as
the improvers of their respective engines; but, as to all that is
admirable in their structure or vast in their utility, they are rather
entitled to be described as their Inventors. While the invention of Watt
increased the power, and at the same time so regulated the action of the
steam-engine, as to make it capable of being applied alike to the hardest
work and to the finest manufactures, the invention of Stephenson gave an
effective power to the locomotive, which enabled it to perform the work
of teams of the most powerful horses, and to outstrip the speed of the
fleetest. Watt's invention exercised a wonderfully quickening influence
on every branch of industry, and multiplied a thousand-fold the amount of
manufactured productions; and Stephenson's enabled these to be
distributed with an economy and despatch such as had never before been
thought possible. They have both tended to increase indefinitely the
mass of human comforts and enjoyments, and to render them cheap and
accessible to all. But Stephenson's invention, by the influence which it
is daily exercising upon the civilisation of the world, is even more
remarkable than that of Watt, and is calculated to have still more
important consequences. In this respect, it is to be regarded as the
grandest application of steam power that has yet been discovered.

The Locomotive, like the condensing engine, exhibits the realisation of
various capital, but wholly distinct, ideas, promulgated by many
ingenious inventors. Stephenson, like Watt, exhibited a power of
selection, combination, and invention of his own, by which--while
availing himself of all that had been done before him, and superadding
the many skilful contrivances devised by himself--he was at length
enabled to bring his engine into a condition of marvellous power and
efficiency. He gathered together the