Grange, and afterwards at Tapton House, near Chesterfield, in comfort
and opulence; growing big pines and melons, keeping birds and dogs, and
indulging himself towards the end in the well-earned repose to which his
useful and laborious life fully entitled him. At last, on the 12th of
August, 1848, he died suddenly of intermittent fever, in his sixty-
seventh year, and was peacefully buried in Chesterfield church. Probably
no one man who ever lived did so much to change and renovate the whole
aspect of human life as George Stephenson; and, unlike many other
authors of great revolutions, he lived long enough to see the full
result of his splendid labours in the girdling of England by his iron
roads. A grand and simple man, he worked honestly and steadfastly
throughout his days, and he found his reward in the unprecedented
benefits which his locomotive was even then conferring upon his fellow-
men. It is indeed wonderful to think how very different is the England
in which we live to-day, from that in which we might possibly have been
living were it not for the barefooted little collier boy who made clay
models of engines at Wylam, and who grew at last into the great and
famous engineer of the marvellous Liverpool and Manchester railway. The
main characteristic of George Stephenson was perseverance; and it was
that perseverance that enabled him at last to carry out his magnificent
schemes in the face of so much bitter and violent opposition.




III.

JOHN GIBSON, SCULPTOR.