A considerable portion of several of the later years of Stephenson's life was spent in traveling in Europe, partly on business and partly for pleasure. During a visit to Belgium in 1845, he was received everywhere, and by all classes, from the king down to the humblest of his subjects, with such distinction as is rarely accorded even to the greatest men. He soon after visited Spain with Sir Joshua Walmsley, to report on a proposed railway from the capital to the Bay of Biscay. On this journey he was taken ill, and his health was permanently impaired. Thenceforward he devoted himself principally to the direction of his own property, which had become very considerable, and spent much of his time at the collieries and other works in which he had invested it. His son had now entirely relieved him of all business connected with railroads, and he had leisure to devote to self-improvement and social amusement. Among his friends he claimed Sir Robert Peel, his old acquaintance, now Sir William, Fairbairn, Dr. Buckland, and many others of the distinguished men of that time. In August, 1848, Stephenson was attacked with intermittent fever, succeeded by hæmorrhage from the lungs, and died on the 12th of that month, at the age of sixty-six years, honored of all men, and secure of an undying fame. Soon after his death, statues were erected at Liverpool, London, and Newcastle, the cost of the second of which was defrayed by private subscriptions, including a contribution of about $1,500 by 3,150 workingmen--one of the finest tributes ever offered to the memory of a great man. But the noblest monument is that which he himself erected by the establishment of a system of education and protection of his working-people at Clay Cross. He made it a condition of employment that every employé should contribute from five to twelve pence each fortnight to a fund, to which the works also made liberal contributions. From that fund it was directed that the expenses of free education of the children of the work-people, night-schools for those employed in the works, a reading-room and library, medical treatment, and a benevolent fund were to be defrayed. Music and cricket-clubs, and prize funds for the best garden, were also founded. The school, public hall, and the church of Clay Cross, and this noble system of support, are together a nobler monument than any statue or similar structure could be. The character of George Stephenson was in every way admirable. Simple, earnest, and honorable; courageous, indomitable, and industrious; humorous, kind, and philanthropic, his memory will long be cherished, and will long prove an incentive to earnest effort and to the pursuit of an honorable fame with hundreds of the youth who, reading his simple yet absorbing story, as told by his biographer, shall in later years learn to know him. [Illustration: FIG. 57.--Stephenson's Locomotive, 1833.]