working men have raised themselves by their own exertions to a position
of wealth and dignity far surpassing his; few indeed have conferred so
many benefits upon untold thousands of their fellow-men. It is
impossible, even now, to travel in any part of England, Wales, or
Scotland, without coming across innumerable memorials of Telford's great
and useful life; impossible to read the full record of his labours
without finding that numberless structures we have long admired for
their beauty or utility, owe their origin to the honourable, upright,
hardworking, thoroughgoing, journeyman mason of the quiet little Eskdale
village. Whether we go into the drained fens of Lincolnshire, or
traverse the broad roads of the rugged Snowdon region; whether we turn
to St. Katharine's Docks in London, or to the wide quays of Dundee and
those of Aberdeen; whether we sail beneath the Menai suspension bridge
at Bangor, or drive over the lofty arches that rise sheer from the
precipitous river gorge at Cartland, we meet everywhere the lasting
traces of that inventive and ingenious brain. And yet, what lad could
ever have started in the world under apparently more hopeless
circumstances than widow Janet Telford's penniless orphan shepherd-boy
Tam, in the bleakest and most remote of all the lonely border valleys of
southern Scotland?




II.

GEORGE STEPHENSON, ENGINE-MAN.


Any time about the year 1786, a stranger in the streets of the grimy