s, had the adventurous imagination
proper to great speculators, which is the poetry of the counting-house
and wharf, and were better able to receive the enthusiastic infection of
the great projector's sanguine hope that the Westminster committee. They
were exultant and triumphant at the near completion of the work, though,
of course, not without some misgivings as to the eventual success of the
stupendous enterprise. My father knew several of the gentlemen most
deeply interested in the undertaking, and Stephenson having proposed a
trial trip as far as the fifteen-mile viaduct, they, with infinite
kindness, invited him and permitted me to accompany them; allowing me,
moreover, the place which I felt to be one of supreme honor, by the side
of Stephenson. All that wonderful history, as much more interesting than
a romance as truth is stranger than fiction, which Mr. Smiles's
biography of the projector has given in so attractive a form to the
world, I then heard from his own lips. He was a rather stern-featured
man, with a dark and deeply marked countenance; his speech was strongly
inflected with his native Northumbrian accent, but the fascination of
that story told by himself, while his tame dragon flew panting along his
iron pathway with us, passed the first reading of the "Arabian Nights,"
the incidents of which it almost seemed to recall. He was wonderfully
condescending and kind in answering all the questions of my eager
ignorance, and I listened to him with eyes brimful of warm tears of
sympathy and enthusiasm, as he told me of all his alternations of hope
and fear, of his many trials and disappointments, related with fine
scorn how the "Parliament men" had badgered and baffled him with their
book-knowledge, and how, when at last they thought they had smothered
the irrepressible prophecy of his genius in the quaking depths of
Chatmoss, he had exclaimed, "Did ye ever see a boat float on water? I
will make my road float upon Chatmoss!" The well-read Parliament men
(some of whom, perhaps, wished for no railways near their parks and
pleasure-grounds) could not believe the miracle, but the shrewd
Liverpool merchants, helped to their faith by a great vision of immense
gain, did; and so the railroad was made, and I took this memorable ride
by the side of its maker, and would not have exchanged the honor and
pleasure of it for one of the shares in the speculation.

LIVERPOOL, Augu