PREFACE. 



THE object of the following volumes is to give an 

 account of some of the principal men by whom the 

 material development of England has been promoted, 

 the men by whose skill and industry large tracts of 

 fertile land have been won from the sea, the bog, and 

 the fen, and made available for human habitation and 

 sustenance ; who have rendered the country accessible 

 in all directions by means of roads, bridges, canals, 

 and railways ; and have built lighthouses, breakwaters, 

 docks, and harbours, for the protection and accommoda- 

 tion of our vast home and foreign commerce. 



Notwithstanding the national interest which might be 

 supposed to belong to this branch of literature, it has 

 hitherto received but little attention. When the author 

 first mentioned to the late Mr. Robert Stephenson his 

 intention of writing the Life of his father, that gentleman 

 expressed strong doubts as to the possibility of rendering 

 the subject sufficiently popular to attract the attention of 

 the reading public. " The building of bridges, the exca- 

 vation of tunnels, the making of roads and railways," he 

 observed, "are mere mechanical matters, possessing no 

 literary interest ; " and in proof of this he referred to the 

 4 Life of Telford ' as "a work got up at great expense, 

 but which had fallen still-born from the press." 



Besides the apparent unattractiveness of the subject, 

 its eifective treatment involved the necessity of burrow- 

 ing through a vast amount of engineering reports, which, 



VOL. I. b 



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