did and valuable discoveries, extended only over a space of not quite thirty years. He had not completed his fifty-first year when he died. Nor was Davy merely a man of science. His general acquirements were diversified and extensive. He was familiar with the principal continental languages, and wrote his own with an eloquence not usually found in scientific works. All his writings, indeed, show the scholar, and the lover of elegant literature, as well as the ingenious and accomplished philosopher. It not unfrequently happens that able men, who have been their own instructors, and have chosen for themselves some one field of exertion in which the world acknowledges, and they themselves feel, their eminence, both disregard and despise all other sorts of knowledge and acquirement. This is pedantry in its most vulgar and offensive form; for it is not merely ignorant, but intolerant. It speaks highly in favour of the right constitution and the native power of Davy's understanding, that educated as he was, he escaped every taint of this species of illiberality; and that while, like almost all those who have greatly distinguished themselves in the world of intellect, he selected and persevered in his one favourite path, he nevertheless revered wisdom and genius in all their manifestations.

GEORGE STEPHENSON.

RAILWAY train, a steamer, or our complicated system of telegraphy, are all often triumphantly pointed to as While there is

When

the high-water mark of modern civilisation. nothing wrong in this, it is at the same time self-evident that it is well to bear the thought in mind, that our boasted progress has been a slow growth, that a thousand lives and influences have been used to help it forward, and that the men of the present age are laying down or recreating the foundations of of the life and wellbeing of the generations to come. we think of railways and the locomotive, the names of James Watt and George Stephenson rise to mind. We intend briefly and simply to trace the principal incidents in the career of the latter. To all true workers it is full of stimulus and encouragement, for work done wisely, worthily, and well, anywhere, unites the worker to that great fellowship, known or unknown to the world, who labour as in the sight and hope of heaven, and do well the little common duties of every day.

George Stephenson was born on the 9th of June, 1781, at the village of Wylam, about eight miles west of Newcastle-onTyne. His parents were poor but respectable, and his father, Robert Stephenson, was fireman of the pumping-engine at Wylam, and he is described by Dr. Smiles as of an amiable

disposition. While tending his engine fire he would draw around him the young folks of the village and tell them the story of Sinbad the Sailor, or Robinson Crusoe. He was partial to birds, and would sometimes go bird-nesting, and once took young George to see a nestful of young blackbirds, a sight which he never forgot. None of Stephenson's children went to school, as his limited income would not admit of it. The common two-storied, red-tiled building, where they dwelt, stood just beside the wooden tramway on which the coalwaggons were drawn by horses from the coal-pit to the loadingquay, and one of the duties of the elder children was to watch and keep the younger ones out of the way of the waggons, which were daily dragged up and down by horses. Eight years of his life had passed when the Stephenson family removed to Dewley Burn. Young Stephenson's first actual employment was to herd a neighbour's cows at the wage of twopence a-day. Like other boys of his age, he spent much of his time in birdnesting, in making whistles, and in erecting little water-mills in the streams near by. "But his favourite amusement at this early age was in erecting clay engines in conjunction with his chosen playmate, Tom Thirlaway. They found the clay for their engines in the adjoining bog; and the hemlock which grew about, supplied them with abundance of imaginary steampipes." His next work was to lead the horses when ploughing, or to hoe turnips and other farm work. When taken on at the colliery and employed to clear the coal of stones, bats, and dross, his wages were advanced to sixpence a-day, and afterwards to eightpence, when he was set to drive the gin-horse. While driving the gin at Black Callerton Colliery, two milesfrom Dewley Burn, he indulged his fondness for bird-nesting in the hedgerows as he passed along to and from his work. He