of that sum ten shares in the Company's stock. At first, Robert Stephenson liked his £1,000 all the better for being in that form, since his own judgement, as well as the observations of bystanders, assured him that the new railway must eventually answer. He did not calculate with a foreknowledge that the undertaking would be mismanaged. And he was at the time ignorant of the difference between the legal positions of a shareholder in an incorporated railway, and of a shareholder in a line without an act of incorporation.

The ultimate fate of this ill-starred Company will not at present be set forth. It is, however, best to notice, at this point, the course of its affairs during the construction of the London and Birmingham Railway. At great outlay the directors built staiths, and purchased freehold and leasehold houses, buildings, wharves, and quays at South Shields; and in the March of 1835, on the projection of the Durham Junction Railway, in which the proprietors of the Stanhope and Tyne deemed themselves deeply interested, the directors of the latter Company subscribed £40,000 out of £80,000 to be raised for the new line. For the most part these purchases and new engagements were based on good considerations, and were such, that if the pecuniary obligations consequent upon them had been originally made on a proper scale, and had then been met in a proper way, no objection could have been preferred against them. But not content with buying at exorbitant prices, the new Company started with the ruinous system of borrowing on bills, instead of raising from amongst themselves, or by the creation of new shares, the sums necessary for liquidating debts. The fact was, the directory lay in the hands of persons whose circumstances precluded any other

system of raising money. From first to last an important department of the business of the directors was to raise money on accommodation bills on terms averaging 11 per cent. per annum. In June 1834, following the February in which their deed of settlement was executed, the directors obtained on mortgage £60,000 from the Alliance Assurance Company. The railway and collieries commenced working in September 1834, and by the end of the year the entire expenditure of the Company amounted to £226,485 17s. Od.; of which amount £100,000 had been received from payments on the 1,000 paid-up shares, £60,000 had come from the Alliance Assurance mortgage, and the remaining £66,485 178. Od. had been raised on bills. Twenty-four thousand pounds were soon afterwards raised by debentures. Thus affairs began, and thus they went on. Loan was raised on loan, bill accepted after bill. Every month affairs looked worse; so that in 1838, when the London and Birmingham line was opened, instead of finding himself the owner of £1,000 in a railway the shares of which were at a premium, Robert Stephenson

found himself with ten shares in an affair that was throughout the money-market a byword for failureshares which he would gladly have been able to throw into the sea, since they rendered him personally liable for an enormous sum of money. Thus was Robert Stephenson paid for engineering services. He had done good work, and as a reward for the service he found insolvency staring him in the face. It was a salutary lesson to him. Ever afterwards he resolutely refused to take the shares of any company in payment for work done. He took, indeed, thirty shares in the London and Birmingham

previous to the Act being obtained; when the directors, finding great difficulty in getting the proportion of subscriptions required by standing orders, called on all their principal officers to put down their names for shares. But that was a different affair; and moreover, he had not then the experience of the four succeeding years to guide him. To speculation of all sorts he had a dislike amounting to repugnance. His investments gave modest dividends, but they were safe. He believed in the maxim that a high rate of interest is only another name for bad security. This distaste for pecuniary risk was seen in little things as well as great-in his amusements as well as his commercial arrangements. He liked horse-races, and during the last years of his life always endeavoured to be at Epsom and at Ascot, but his most intimate friends never knew him to bet a shilling on any horse. In the same way, he enjoyed a rubber, but he never played for high stakes.

In the May of 1835, Robert Stephenson accompanied his father to Brussels; the elder and the younger engineer having been summoned by King Leopold to advise as to the construction of a complete system of railways for his kingdom. On that occasion, when the father obtained the decoration of the Order of Leopold, the son was also admitted to familiar intercourse with the King. Two years afterwards, on the public opening of the railway between Brussels and Ghent, when George Stephenson was received by the Belgians with an enthusiasm of admiration, Robert Stephenson renewed his acquaintance with a country which enjoys distinction amongst continental nations for an early and cordial adoption of railroad locomotion, and was again hospit

ably entertained by the sovereign, who in 1841 conferred on him, as he had six years before conferred on George Stephenson, the decoration of the Order of Leopold.

On his return from Belgium, Robert Stephenson found himself overwhelmed with work. The scant leisure left him by the London and Birmingham line was more than fully occupied with examining projects for new lines which sprung up in every direction, and concerning which his advice was sought alike by engineers and by the public. For two years he managed to attend to this extra-official business at his office at Camden Town, on the London and Birmingham works. In 1836, however, finding he could no longer, either with comfort to himself or with the approval of the Company, receive his daily levy of projectors and engineers at Camden Town, he took an office in Duke Street, Westminster. In the following year this office was relinquished for one in Great George Street, Westminster, with which street the Stephensons and their profession are intimately associated in the public mind. In that street Robert Stephenson, with the principal members of his staff, had offices up to the time of his death. On the doors of 24 Great George Street country sight-seers still read the name of the great constructor of railways and builder of bridges; and in the adjoining mansion is established the Institution of Civil Engineers.

The years 1836 and 1837 were remarkable for railway enterprise. In the thick of the parliamentary fight Robert Stephenson appeared as professional witness, and more especially as the projector and engineer of a line between London and Brighton, which unfortunately miscarried, but was not shelved until it had engrossed a large amount of attention and discussion. As early as

1833, and indeed before that year, his attention was called to the subject of railway communication between the metropolis and the most fashionable watering-place of the country. In 1834 and in 1835, he was again consulted as to the lines projected between those points, and finding none of the proposed routes such as he could in all respects recommend he sketched out a line of his own. The consequence was that the session of 1836 saw four distinct applications to Parliament for different lines between London and the Sussex cliffs. The rival projects were Sir John Rennie's, or the direct line; Mr. Robert Stephenson's line; Mr. Joseph Gibbs's line; and Mr. Cundy's line. Here was a noble fight for Westminster, spoil for lawyers, agents, surveyors, and witnesses. Each of these proposed lines availed itself of a terminus already constructed, Stephenson's line taking the terminus of the London and Southampton Railway at Nine Elms, a little above Vauxhall, with a depôt on the banks of the Thames, and branching from the line at Wimbledon Common, five miles and a half from the terminus; and the direct line and Gibbs's both adopting the Greenwich Railway Terminus at London Bridge, and availing themselves of the railway, already sanctioned and under course of construction, as far as Croydon.

Mr. Cundy's projected line was a freak of daring such as can only be found in times of unusual excitement. In these comparatively sober days it can scarcely be believed that just five and twenty years ago a company should have contemplated the construction of an important line of railway, and, with full attention to all the costly forms of law, have applied to parliament for leave to construct their line, without having made any survey