472 COMPAKED WITH WATT. CHAP. XXI. 



convictions as to the great uses to which the locomotive 

 might be applied, he waited long and patiently for the 

 opportunity of bringing it into notice ; and for years 

 after he had completed an efficient engine he went on 

 quietly devoting himself to the ordinary work of the 

 colliery. He made no noise nor stir about his locomo- 

 tive, but allowed another to take credit for the experi- 

 ments on velocity and friction made with it by himself 

 upon the Killingworth railroad. 



By patient industry and laborious contrivance, he was 

 enabled, with the powerful help of his son, to do for the 

 locomotive what James Watt had done for the con- 

 densing engine. He found it clumsy and inefficient ; 

 and he made it powerful, efficient, and useful. Both 

 have been described as the improvers of their respective 

 engines ; but, as to all that is admirable in their structure 

 or vast in their utility, they are rather entitled to be 

 described as their Inventors. While the invention of 

 Watt increased the power, and at the same time so 

 regulated the action, of the steam-engine, as to make it 

 capable of being applied alike to the hardest work and 

 to the finest manufactures, the invention of Stephenson 

 gave an effective power to the locomotive, which enabled 

 it to perform the work of teams of the most powerful 

 horses, and to outstrip the speed of the fleetest. Watt's 

 invention exercised a wonderfully quickening influence 

 on every branch of industry, and multiplied a thousand- 

 fold the amount of manufactured productions ; and 

 Stephenson's enabled these to be distributed with an 

 economy and despatch such as had never before been 

 thought possible. They have both tended to increase 

 indefinitely the mass of human comforts and enjoyments, 

 and to render them cheap and accessible to all. But 

 Stephenson's invention, by the influence which it is 

 daily exercising upon the civilisation of the world, is 

 even more remarkable than that of Watt, and is calcu- 



