OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 9 



and subsequent death of the latter, he became, in pubhc estimation, 

 though not without rivals, the first railway engineer in Europe. 



This is not the time nor the place to review his controversies with 

 some of his rivals, who, with more ambition than genius, attempted to 

 surpass his constructions, and those of his father, by mere excess of 

 dimensions, — for which they received from many persons a praise 

 which should be accorded only to improvements of mechanical con- 

 struction or organization. It is enough upon this subject to say, that 

 the experience of the few years that have yet elapsed has shown, as 

 far as so short an experience can show, that upon all these subjects of 

 controversy Mr. Stephenson was mainly in the right ; nor has it yet ap- 

 peared that in his long and diversified career he ever made what may 

 be called an engineering blunder. Praise like this can hardly be 

 accorded to any one who has gone before him. 



Of all the works of Mr. Stephenson, the tubular bridge, of which the 

 first was constructed to cross the Menai Strait, is that upon Avhich his 

 reputation for genius will mainly rest. In the construction of the 

 railway and locomotive, no high claim as an inventor can be accorded 

 to him, for not only his father, but Trevethick and many others had 

 preceded him ; but the tubular bridge is the embodiment of a high 

 original conception, at once bold and practical ; and although it will 

 probably never be of common use, yet there have been and must 

 hereafter occur extraordinary obstacles, which cannot be so well over- 

 come in any other way. 



Our colleague was fortunate, not only in his paternity, but in his 

 time ; — a time when the wealth of a long peace and the activity of a 

 great empire were lavishly poured out under an excessive, perhaps 

 morbid, excitement for railway improvements. This, added to the 

 great aid derived from the recent improvements in all the useful arts, 

 gave him a success that no genius or activity at any preceding time 

 could have brought to his career, — a career that posterity Avill not fail 

 to recognize as having left a deep impression upon our age. 



Frederick William Thiersch, one of the most distinguished 

 philologists of the age, was born at Kitscheidungen near Freyburg, 

 June 17, 1784. His early education was pursued in the schools of his 

 native town ; he studied afterwards at the Universities of Leipsic and 

 Gottingen, and took his doctor's degree at Gottingen in 1808, imme- 

 diately after which he was appointed Professor in the Lyceum of that 

 place. In the following year (1809) he was called to Munich as 



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