Mr. Stephenson was of course, actively engaged in the construction of the numerous railways now projected by the joint-stock companies. The desire for railway extension principally pervaded the manufacturing districts, especially after the successful opening of the Liverpool and Manchester line. The commercial classes of the larger towns soon became eager for a participation in the good which they had so recently derided. Railway projects were set on foot in great numbers, and Manchester became a centre from which main lines and branches were started in all directions. The interest, however, which attaches to these later schemes is of a much less absorbing kind than that which belongs to the earlier history of the railway and the steps by which it was mainly established. We naturally sympathise more keenly with the early struggles of a great principle, its trials and its difficulties, than with its after stages of success; and, however gratified and astonished we may be at its consequences, the interest is in a great measure gone when its triumph has become a matter of certainty. The commercial results of the Liverpool and Manchester line were so satisfactory, and indeed so greatly exceeded the expectations of its projectors, that many of the abandoned projects of the speculative year 1825 were forthwith revived. An abundant crop of engineers sprang up, ready to execute railways of any extent. Now that the Liverpool and Manchester line had been made, and the practicability of working it by locomotive power had been proved, it was as easy for engineers to make railways and to work them, as it was for navigators to find America after Columbus had made the first voyage. Mr. Francis Giles attached himself to the Newcastle and Carlisle and London and Southampton projects. Mr. Brunel appeared as engineer of the line projected between London and Bristol; and Mr. Braithwaite, the builder of the “Novelty” engine, acted in the same capacity for a railway from London to Colchester. The first lines constructed subsequent to the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, were mostly in connection with it, and principally in the county of Lancaster. Thus a branch was formed from Bolton to Leigh, and another from Leigh to Kenyon, where it formed a junction with the main line between Liverpool and Manchester. Branches to Wigan on the north, and to Runcorn Gap and Warrington on the south of the same line, were also formed. A continuation of the latter, as far south as Birmingham, was shortly after projected under the name of the Grand Junction Railway.