In most cases, the working man who raises himself to wealth and
position, does so by means of trade, which is usually the natural
outgrowth of his own special handicraft or calling. If he attains, not
only to riches, but to distinction as well, it is in general by
mechanical talent, the direction of the mind being naturally biased by
the course of one's own ordinary occupations. England has been
exceptionally rich in great engineers and inventive geniuses of such
humble origin--working men who have introduced great improvements in
manufactures or communications; and our modern English civilization has
been immensely influenced by the lives of these able and successful
mechanical toilers. From Brindley, the constructor of the earliest great
canal, to Joseph Gillott, the inventor of the very steel pen with which
this book is written; from Arkwright the barber who fashioned the first
spinning-machine, to Crompton the weaver, whose mule gave rise to the
mighty Manchester cotton trade; from Newcomen, who made the first rough
attempt at a steam-engine, to Stephenson, who sent the iron horse from
end to end of the land,--the chief mechanical improvements in the
country have almost all been due to the energy, intelligence, and skill
of our labouring population. The English mind is intensely practical,
and the English working man, for the last two centuries at least, has
been mainly distinguished for his great mechanical aptitude, bursting
out, here and there, in exceptional persons, under the form of
exceedingly high inventive genius.

At our very doors, however, there is a small nation of largely different
blood and of wholly different speech from our own; a nation forming a
part of our own kingdom, even more closely than the Scotch or the Irish,
and yet in some respects further from us in mind and habit of life than
either; a nation marked rather by the poetical and artistic, than by the
mechanical and practical temperament--the ancient and noble Welsh