A writer in Chambers’s Journal, 1847, remarks:—“It was not until after four or five years of agitation, and several editions of Mr. Gray’s work had been published and successively commented upon by many newspapers, that commercial men were roused to give the proposed scheme its first great trial on the road between Liverpool and Manchester. The success of that experiment, insured by the engineering skill of Stephenson, was the signal for all that has since been done both in this island and in other parts of the world. Unfortunately, the public has been too busy these many years in making railways to inquire to whom it owes its gratitude for having first expounded and advocated their claims; and probably there are few men now living who have served the public as effectually, with so little return in the way of thanks or applause, as Mr. Thomas Gray, the proposer in 1820 of a general system of transit by railways.” Poor Gray! He was far ahead of his times. Public men called him a bore, and people in Nottingham, where he resided, said he was cracked. The _Quarterly Review_ declared such persons are not worth our notice, and the _Edinburgh Review_ said “Put him in a straight jacket.” Thus the world is often ignorant of its greatest benefactors. Gray died in poverty. His widow and daughters earned their living by teaching a small school at Exeter. OPENING OF THE DARLINGTON AND STOCKTON RAILWAY. In the autumn of 1825 the _Times_ gave an account of the origin of one of the most gigantic enterprises of modern times. In that year the Darlington and Stockton Railway was formally opened by the proprietors for the use of the public. It was a single railway, and the object of its promoters was to open the London market to the Durham Collieries, as well as to facilitate the obtaining of fuel to the country along its line and certain parts of Yorkshire. The account of the opening says:—