Xvi. ABSTRACT OF, PROCEEDINGS. 
locomotive, and his character was drawn in contrast to 
to that of George Stephenson, who, later, making use of 
his ideas, as well as those of Blenkinsop, Hedley, Booth, — 
and others, is universally regarded as the father of railways. 
His was the common sense, the foresight, the determination, 
the self-confidence, in the best sense of the word, which 
brought their inventions to the front, and which, in spite 
of the most strenuous opposition, finally established the 
Stockton and Darlington, and Liverpool to Manchester 
railways, as practicable enterprises. The exciting trial of 
engines on the latter line in 1829, the victory of the 
**Rocket,’’ in which Stephenson, as its designer, had 
embodied the successful features of its rivals, were fully 
described, and it was shown that though this engine was 
but 44 tons in weight, and had a mere fraction of the power 
of the present locomotive, it contained the principles which 
are the essential ones of the modern engine, and marked 
the passage of the boundary line between experiment and 
success. The lecturer contrasted this primitive 10 mile an 
hour line with one now proposed between the very same 
towns, at the investigation of which, by the House of 
Commons, he was recently present. In this, the proposal 
is to run 10 minute electric trains, at no less a speed than 
110 miles an hour. It was not till some years after 1830, 
the date of the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester 
railway, that the public began to realise thoroughly that 
it was more than an experiment, and amusing anecdotes 
were given showing the attitude more especially of, old 
people, towards the new method of locomotion. Attention 
was also drawn to the fact that its subsequent enormous 
development was not seriously believed in for a long time, 
as the absence of allusion to it in the literature of the 
- early thirties showed. The various appliances which, since 
1830, have brought the primitive contrivance of those days 
to the perfected one of to-day, were rapidly referred to, 
