x PREFACE. 



of the question, he communicated to Robert Stephenson 

 his regret at not being able, under these circumstances, 

 to prosecute the proposed biography. 



Thus three more years passed, during which nothing 

 further was done. No biographer of George Stephenson 

 appeared ; and the persons capable of furnishing infor- 

 mation respecting him were being rapidly thinned off 

 by death. The author had himself almost dismissed the 

 subject from his mind, when circumstances occurred in 

 connection with his railway occupation which rendered 

 it necessary for him to reside at Newcastle-upon-Tyne 

 during the summer of 1854. He was thus unexpectedly 

 placed in a position to prosecute at his leisure the in- 

 tended inquiries relative to the Stephenson biography. 

 Much of the desired information came directly in his 

 way, and the rest he went in search of. It became his 

 recreation in the summer evenings to visit the places 

 where George Stephenson had lived, Wylam, where 

 he was born, Dewley, Callerton, Newburn, and Wil- 

 lington Quay, where he had worked as gin- driver, fire- 

 man, brakesman, and engineman by turns, and Killing- 

 worth, where he had invented the safety-lamp and 

 worked out the problem of the locomotive. All these 

 places were within easy reach of Newcastle by railway ; 

 and thus, helped by the recollections of the engineer's 

 former associates, his life was traced from boyhood to 

 manhood, from the cradle almost to the grave. 



All who had known George Stephenson in his early 

 years were proud to speak of him, and to communi- 

 cate what they remembered of his history. Though he 

 had risen so much above them, there did not seem to 

 mingle an atom of jealousy or envy in their recollections 



