of designating
them by nicknames--the subject of the present memoir is introduced to
us as _Mr_. Brassey, a form not only adopted on the title-page, but
preserved in the body of the work, where we read that "Mr. Brassey
was born November 7, 1805," that "Mr. Brassey, at twelve years of age,
went to a school at Chester," and that, being afterward articled to
a surveyor, "Mr. Brassey was permitted by his master" to assist in
making certain surveys. It is only from a side whisper to the American
public, which is honored with a preface all to itself, that we are
permitted to learn that the great contractor owned to the Christian
name of Thomas. Besides the two prefaces there is a dedication to
the queen, an introduction telling how Sir Arthur Helps made the
acquaintance of Mr. Brassey and what impressions he received from the
interview, and a preliminary chapter containing a brief outline of
Mr. Brassey's character as "a man of business;" so that we get at the
substance of the book by a process like that which in a well-conducted
household precedes the carving and distribution of a Christmas cake,
any eagerness we might feel to "put in a thumb and pull out a plum"
being kept in check by a proper amount of ceremony and tissue-paper.

Plums, however, there are, though not perhaps in full proportion to
the frosted coating, or of just the kind that are best agglutinated by
the biographical dough. Of anecdote or gossip, glimpses of "life and
manners" or personal details, there is nothing. Nor can we justly take
exception to this. On the contrary, it gives a unity to the subject by
excluding whatever had no relation to the enterprises with which Mr.
Brassey's name is connected, and which absorbed his time and thoughts
to a degree that can have left him but little opportunity for
intercourse with mankind except in a business capacity. It is these
enterprises--not in their entirety or with reference to the objects
with which they were designed, but as evidences and illustrations
of the working force, mental and physical, demanded for their
execution--that form the real subject of the book, the matter of which
has been chiefly furnished by the various agents entrusted with the
immediate supervision of the labor and outlay of the capital employed.
The details thus brought together afford perhaps a more vivid idea of
the industrial energy and activity of the nineteenth century, and
of the resources they have called into play, than coul