CHAP. XXI. 



CONVERSATION. 



475 



that one of the party remarked that, if George Stephen- 

 son had not been the greatest engineer of his day, he 

 might have been one of the greatest naturalists. 



His powers of conversation were very great. He 

 was so thoughtful, so original, and so suggestive. 

 There was scarcely a department of science on which 

 he had not formed some novel and sometimes daring- 

 theory. Thus Mr. Gooch, his pupil, who lived with 

 him when at Liverpool, informs us that when sitting 

 over the fire, he would frequently broach his favourite 

 theory of the sun's light and heat being the original 

 source of the light and heat given forth by the burning 

 coal. " It fed the plants of which that coal is made," 

 he would say, "and has been bottled up in the earth 

 ever since, to be given out again now for the use of 

 man." l His son Robert once said of him, " My father 

 flashed his bull's-eye full upon a subject, and brought it 

 out in its most vivid light in an instant : his strong 

 common sense, and his varied experience operating upon 

 a thoughtful mind, were his most powerful illuminators." 



Mr. Stephenson had once a conversation with a 

 watchmaker, whom he astonished by the extent and 

 minuteness of his knowledge as to the parts of a watch. 

 The watchmaker knew him to be an eminent engineer, 

 and asked how he had acquired so extensive a know- 

 ledge of a branch of business so much out of his sphere. 

 " It is very easy to be explained," said Mr. Stephenson ; 

 " I worked long at watch-cleaning myself, and when 

 I was at a loss, I was never ashamed to ask for 

 information." 



It is Gothe, we believe, who has said that no man 

 ever receives a new idea, at variance with his precon- 

 ceived notions, after forty. But this observation, though 



1 Mr. W. B. Adams, in his * Roads 

 and Rails,' London, 1862, cites a 

 passage from a volume of rhymes 

 published by Effingham Wilson in 



1831, from which it would appear 

 that the same idea had occurred to 

 other thinkers besides George Ste- 

 pheiison. 



