XxiX 



Chinese were aware of this, and threatened to dismiss the rest of the 

 embassy, but to detain him as a prisoner. But he declared that 

 this made no alteration in his view of the subject ; that, being con- 

 vinced that he was right, he was quite ready to take his chance of 

 whatever might befall him, rather than swerve from what he re- 

 garded as the strict line of his duty. 



Mr. ROBERT STEPHENSON, M.P., the only son of the late 

 Mr. George Stephenson, was born on the 16th of October, 1803, at 

 "Wellington Quay, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where his father had 

 charge of the colliery engine. The rudiments of his education 

 were received at the village school at Long Benton, whence he was 

 transferred, at the age of ten years, to the academy of Mr. John 

 Bruce, at Newcastle, which he left at the age of sixteen. He then 

 received some instruction in mathematics from Mr. Riddell, now 

 the Master of the Naval School at Greenwich, and was apprenticed 

 as a coalviewer to Mr. Nicholas Wood, with whom he stayed about 

 three years. Mr. George Stephenson having by that time raised 

 himself to the position of a consulting mechanical engineer, and 

 appreciating the advantages of that education which it had not been 

 his own good fortune to receive, determined to send his son to the Uni- 

 versity of Edinburgh, where Robert Stephenson was entered in 1821. 

 During one session, which was all that could be afforded for him, he 

 followed so indefatigably the lectures of the celebrated Professors 

 Leslie, Hope, and Jameson, that he carried off most of the prizes of 

 the year ; and feeling the value of the opportunity, he laboured most 

 assiduously, not only to learn everything that was placed before him, 

 but more especially to lay the foundation for future self-instruction. 



In 1822 he quitted the university to become the apprentice of his 

 father, at the works then first established at Newcastle-on-Tyne 

 for the manufacture of machinery, and whence proceeded the loco- 

 motive engines which were destined to produce such a revolution in 

 the internal communication of all countries, 



His health having suffered from unremitting study and close appli- 

 cation to his duties at the factory, he accepted in 1824 an appoint- 

 ment to investigate and to report upon some silver mines in South 

 America. This occupied him for nearly four years ; and upon his 

 report the Columbian Mining Association was formed. Before his 



