In many respects Stephenson was like Watt. He came from the working classes, inheriting no special gift for science, and little leisure to follow his own bent. What he learned he got at first hand, in the coal mines and the engine shops. What he accomplished was due largely to indomitable perseverance. Others had built steam-engines that were almost successful as locomotives, but for one reason or another had never pushed their invention to that point where the world could actually use it. When Stephenson had built his locomotive he fought for it, he made men take an interest in it, and the world accept it. He always spoke of his career as a battle. “I have fought,” said he, “for the locomotive single-handed for nearly twenty years, having no engineer to help me until I had reared engineers under my own care.” And again he said, “I put up with every rebuff, _determined_ not to be put down.” Stephenson did for the locomotive what Watt did for the condensing engine. He took the primitive devices of other men, and by the rare powers of selection, combination, and invention produced a finished product of wonderful power and efficiency. True it is that neither Watt nor Stephenson were the first men to conceive of a steam-engine or a locomotive, nor even the first to build working models, but they were the first to finish what they began, and add the steam-engine and the locomotive to the other servants of men. Dr. Arnold was doubtless right when he looked upon the railway as presaging the end of the feudal system. Its value is beyond any estimate. It has widened man’s horizon, and given him all the lands instead of only the limits of his homestead. X MORSE AND THE TELEGRAPH 1791-1872