CHAP. XVIIT. 



STEPHENSON AND BKUNEL. 



397 





going a series of consultations upon many bills after 

 the rising of the committees the exhausted engineers 

 would seek to stimulate nature by a late, perhaps a 

 heavy, dinner. What chance had any ordinary con- 

 stitution of surviving such an ordeal ? The consequence 

 was, that stomach, brain, and liver were alike irre- 

 trievably injured ; and hence the men who bore the 

 / heat and brunt of those struggles Stephenson, Brunei, 

 v Locke, and Errington have already all died, compara- 

 ! tively young men. 



In mentioning the name of Brunei, we are reminded 

 of him as the principal rival and competitor of Robert 

 , Stephenson. Both were the sons of distinguished men, 

 and both inherited the fame and followed in the foot- 

 steps of their fathers. The Stephensons were inventive, 

 practical, and sagacious ; the Brunels ingenious, ima- 

 ginative, and daring. The former were as thoroughly 

 English in their characteristics as the latter perhaps 

 were as thoroughly French. The fathers and the sons 

 were alike successful in their works, though not in the 

 same degree. Measured by practical and profitable 

 results, the Stephensons were unquestionably the safer 

 men to follow. 



Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunei 

 were destined often to come into collision in the .course 

 of their professional life. Their respective railway dis- 

 tricts "marched" with each other, and it became their 

 business to invade or defend those districts, according as 

 the policy of their respective boards might direct. The 

 gauge fixed by Mr. Brunei for the Great Western 

 Railway, so entirely different from that adopted by the 

 Stephensons on the Northern and Midland lines, 1 was 



1 The original width of the coal 

 tramroads in the North virtually de- 

 termined the British gauge. It was 

 the width of the ordinary road- track, 

 not fixed after any scientific theory, 

 but adopted simply because its use had 



already been established. George Ste- 

 phenson introduced it without altera- 

 tion on the Liverpool and Manchester 

 Railway ; and the lines subsequently 

 formed in the same district were laid 

 down of the same width. Mr. Ste- 



