The name of Thomas Gray in connection with railroads ranks at present among the many whose ideas were derided by the very men who afterwards adopted them. From an early period he formed the opinion that railways would become the principal mode of transit. It was his thought by day; it was his dream by night. He talked of it until his friends voted him an intolerable bore. He wrote of it until the reviewers deemed him mad. Coaches, canals, and steamboats were, in his mind, useless. His wisdom and far ken shadowed forth the path which the purse of others consummated; and, while the projector died steeped to the lips in poverty, the speculators realized great profits. His conversation was of a world which his companions could not comprehend. To appropriate the idea of Mr. Macaulay, there were fools then as there are fools now; fools who laughed at the railway as they had laughed at the canals; fools who thought they evinced their wisdom by doubting what they could not understand. For years his mind was absorbed by these dreams; and there was something magnificent in all his projects. He talked of enormous fortunes realized; of coaches annihilated; of one great general line;—and he was laughed at. He went to Brussels; and when a canal was proposed, he again advocated railways. At last he put his thoughts into form; wrote “Observations on a Railroad for the Whole of Europe”; and was ridiculed; the work being suppressed, lest men should call him mad. In 1820, however, he published a book which he called, “A general Iron Railway, or Land Steam Conveyance,” which attracted great notice. There was something so pertinacious in the man, and something so simple in his scheme, that, though it became the custom to laugh at him, his book went through many editions. When from Belgium he came to England, true to his theme, he went among the Manchester capitalists. The men who passed their lives among, and owed their fortunes to the marvels of machinery, were not yet equal to this. They listened graciously, and with a smile, something akin to pity, dismissed him as an incorrigible visionary. But opposition was vain; nor was Thomas Gray the man to be easily laughed down. He continued his labors, he continued to talk, to memorialize, to petition, to fill the pages of magazines, until the public mind was wearied and worried.