CHAP. XXI. THE STEPHENSON CHARACTERISTICS. 465 



CHAPTER XXL 



CHARACTERISTICS. 



IT would be out of keeping with the subject thus drawn 

 to a conclusion, to pronounce a panegyric on the cha- 

 racter and achievements of George Stephenson and his 

 son. Both were emphatically true men, presenting in 

 their lives and works a combination of those sterling 

 qualities which we are proud to regard as essentially 

 English. 



In the old Teutonic tongue, Steeveson, of which 

 Stevenson and Stephenson are but modifications, is said 

 to mean the " Son of the Strong ;" nor did either of our 

 engineers belie the appellation. Doubtless they owed 

 much to their birth, belonging as they did to the hardy 

 race of the north a race less supple, soft, and polished 

 than the people of more southern districts ; but, like their 

 Danish progenitors, full of courage, vigour, ingenuity, 

 and persevering industry. Their strong, guttural speech, 

 which sounds so harsh and unmusical in southern ears, 

 is indeed but a type of their nature. When George 

 Stephenson was struggling to give utterance to his views 

 upon the locomotive before the Committee of the House 

 of Commons, those who did not know him supposed he 

 was " a foreigner." Before long the world saw in him 

 an Englishman, stout-hearted and true one of those 

 master minds who, by energetic action in new fields of 

 industry, impress their character from time to time upon 

 the age and nation to which they belong. 



The poverty of his parents being such that they could 

 not give him any, even the very simplest, education, 

 beyond the good example of integrity and industry, he 



VOL. in. 2 H 



