It is the grey dawn of a fine spring morning in the year 1669, and early
though it be, there are many folks astir and gathering in clusters
before the ancient, weather-stained front of All Souls' College, Oxford.
The "Flying Coach" which has been so much talked about, and which has
been solemnly considered and sanctioned by the heads of the University,
is to make its first journey to the metropolis to-day, and to accomplish
it between sunrise and sunset. Hitherto the journey has occupied two
days, the travellers sleeping a night on the road; and the new
undertaking is regarded as very bold and hazardous. A buzz rises from
the knots of people as they discuss its prospects,--some very sanguine,
some very doubtful, not a few very angry at the presumption of the
enterprise. But six o'clock is on the strike--all the passengers are
seated, some of them rather wishful to be safe on the pavement
again--the driver has got the reins in his hand--the guard sounds his
bugle, and off goes the "Flying Coach" at a rattling pace, amidst the
cheering of the crowd and the benedictions of the university "Dons," who
have come down to honour the event with their presence. Learned,
liberal-minded men these "Dons" are for the times they live in; but only
fancy what they would think if some old seer, whose meditation and
research had
"Pierced the future, far as human eye could see,
Seen the vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be,"
were to come forth and tell them, that before two centuries were over
men would think far less of travelling from Oxford to London in one hour
than they then did of doing so in a day, by means of a machine of iron,
mounted upon wheels, which should rush along the ground, and drag a
load, which a hundred horses could not move, as though it were a
feather. Roger Bacon had prophesied as much four centuries before; the
Marquis of Worcester was propounding the same theory at that very day,
and yet who can blame them if they treated the notion as the falsehood
of an impostor, or the hallucination of a lunatic?
In these days when railways traverse the country in every direction,
and are still multiplying rapidly, when no two towns of the least
size and consideration are unprovided with this mode of mutual
communication--when we step into a railway carriage as readily as into
an omnibus, and breakfasting comfortably in London, are whisked off to
Edinburgh, almost in time for the fashionable dinner hour,--it requires
no little effort to realize the incredulity and contempt with which the
idea of superseding the stage-coach by the steam locomotive, and having
lines of iron railways instead of the common highways, was regarded for
many years after the beginning of the present century. Even after the
practicability of the project had been proved, and steam-engines had
been seen puffing along the rails, with a train of carriages attached,
even so late as 1825, we find one of the leading periodicals--the
_Quarterly Review_--denouncing the gross exaggeration of the powers of
the locomotive which its promoters were guilty of, and predicting that
though it might delude for a time, it must end in the mortification of
all concerned. The fact was, said the writer, that people would as soon
suffer themselves to be fired off like a Congreve rocket, as trust
themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate--the
rate of eighteen miles an hour, which people now-a-days, accustomed to
dash along in express trains at two or three times that speed, would
deem a perfect snail-pace.
The "railway" had the start of the locomotive by a couple of centuries,
and derives its parentage from the clumsy wooden way-leaves or
tram-roads which were laid down to lessen the labour of dragging the
coal-waggons to and from the place of shipment in the Newcastle
colleries. These were in use from the beginning of the seventeenth
century, but it was not till the beginning of the nineteenth that the
locomotive steam-engine made its appearance. Watt himself took out a
patent for a locomotive in 1784, but nothing came of it; and the honour
of having first proved the practicability of applying steam to the
purposes of locomotion is due to a Cornishman named Trevithick, who
devised a high-pressure engine of very ingenious construction, and
actually set it to work on one of the roads in South Wales. At first,
therefore, there was no alliance between the engine and the rail; and
though afterwards Trevithick adapted it to run on a tram-way, something
went wrong with it, and the idea was for the time abandoned. There was a
long-headed engine-man in one of the Newcastle collieries about this
time, in whose mind the true solution of the problem was rapidly
developing, but Trevithick had nearly forestalled him. The stories of
these two men afford a most instructive lesson. A man of undoubted
talent and ingenuity, with influential friends both in Cornwall and
London, Trevithick had a fair start in life, and every opportunity of
distinguishing himself. But he lacked steadiness and perseverance, and
nothing prospered with him. He had no sooner applied himself to one
scheme than he threw it up, and became engrossed in another, to be
abandoned in turn for some new favourite. He was always beginning some
novelty, and never ending what he had begun, and the consequence was an
almost constant succession of failures. He was always unhappy and
unsuccessful. If now and then a gleam of success did brighten on his
path, it was but temporary, and was speedily absorbed in the gloom of
failure. He found a man of capital to take up his high-pressure engine,
got his locomotive built and set to work, brought his ballast engine
into use, and stood in no want of praise and encouragement; and yet, one
after another his schemes went wrong. Not one of them did well, because
he never stuck to any of them long enough. "The world always went wrong
with him," he said himself. "He always went wrong with the world," said
more truly those who knew him. His haste, impatience, and want of
perseverance ruined him. After actually witnessing his steam engine at
work in Wales, dragging a train of heavy waggons at the rate of five
miles an hour, he lost conceit of his invention, went away to the West
Indies, and did not return to England till Stephenson had solved the
difficulty of steam locomotion, and was laying out the Stockton and
Darlington Railway. The humble engine-man, without education, without
friends, without money, with countless obstacles in his way, and not a
single advantage, save his native genius and resolution, had won the
day, and distanced his more favoured and accomplished rival. It was
reserved for GEORGE STEPHENSON to bring about the alliance of the
locomotive and the railroad--"man and wife," as he used to call
them--whose union, like that of heaven and earth in the old mythology,
was to bear an offspring of Titanic might--the modern railway.