2. To the _a priori_ reasoners, who sat in their studies and demonstrated with complete unanimity that uncogged wheels would revolve on a smooth rail, but leave the carriage _in statu quo,_ he replied by building an engine with Lord Ravensworth's noble aid, hooking on eight carriages, and rattling off up an incline. _“Solvitur ambulando,_” quoth Stephenson the stout-hearted to Messrs. _A Priori._ Next a coach ran on the Stockton and Darlington rail. Next the Liverpool and Manchester line was projected. Oh, then, what bitter opposition to the national benefactors, and the good of man! Awake from the tomb echoes of dead Cant. “The revolving wheels might move the engine on a rail; but what would that avail if they could not move them in the closet, and on a mathematical paper? Railways would be bad for canals, bad for morals, bad for highwaymen, bad for roadside inns: the smoke would kill the partridges ['Aha! thou hast touched us nearly,' said the country gentlemen), the travellers would go slowly to their destination, but swift to destruction.” And the _Heavy Review,_ whose motto was _“Stemus super_ turnpikes,” offered “to back old Father Thames against the Woolwich railway for any sum.” And Black Will, who drove the next heaviest ephemeral in the island, told a schoolboy, who now writes these pages, “there's nothing can ever be safe at twenty miles an hour, without 'tis a bird in the air;” and confirmed it with an oath. Briefly, buzz! buzz! buzz! Gray was crushed, Trevethick driven out of the country, stout Steevie thwarted, badgered, taunted, and even insulted, and bespattered with dirt--I might say with dung, since his opponents discharged their own brains at him by speech and writing. At last, when, after the manner of men, they had manured their benefactor well, they consented to reap him. Railways prevailed, and increased, till lo and behold a Prime Minister with a spade delving one in the valley of the Trent. The tide turned; good working railways from city to city became an approved investment of genuine capital, notwithstanding the frightful frauds and extortion to which the projectors were exposed in a Parliament which, under a new temptation, showed itself as corrupt and greedy as any nation or age can parallel.