CIIAI-. XVIIT. ROBERT STEPHENSOX. 395 



Robert Stephenson amply repaid his father's care. 

 The sound education of which he had laid the founda- 

 tions at Brace's school at Newcastle, improved by his 

 subsequent culture at Edinburgh College, but more than 

 all by his father's example in application, industry, and 

 thoroughness in all that he undertook, told powerfully 

 in the formation of his character, not less than in the 

 discipline of his intellect. His father, had early im- 

 planted in him habits of mental activity, familiarized 

 him with the laws of mechanics, and carefully trained 

 and stimulated his inventive faculties, the first great 

 fruits of which, as we have seen y were exhibited in the 

 triumph of the "Rocket" at Rainhill. "I am fully 

 conscious in my own mind," said the son, at a meeting 

 of the Mechanical Engineers at Newcastle, in 1858, 

 " how greatly my civil engineering has been regulated 

 and influenced by the mechanical knowledge which I 

 derived directly from my father; and the more my 

 experience has advanced, the more convinced I have 

 become that it is necessary to educate an engineer in 

 the workshop. That is, emphatically, the education 

 which will render the engineer most intelligent, most 

 useful, and the fullest of resources in times of difficulty." 



Robert Stephenson was but twenty-six years old 

 when the performances of the " Rocket " established the 

 practicability of steam locomotion on railways. He wasj 

 shortly after appointed engineer of the Leicester and! 

 Swuimington Railway; after which, at his father's) 

 request, he was made joint engineer with himself in the 

 engineering of the London and Birmingham Railway, 

 and the execution of that line was afterwards almost 

 entirely entrusted to him. The stability and excellence 

 of the works of that railway, the difficulties which had 

 been successfully overcome in the course of its construc- 

 tion, and the -judgment which was displayed by Robert 

 Stephenson throughout the whole conduct of the under- 

 taking to its completion, established his reputation as an 



