Before leaving the subject of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, we can not avoid alluding to one of its most remarkable and direct results--the creation of the town of Middlesborough-on-Tees. When the railway was opened in 1825, the site of this future metropolis of Cleveland was occupied by one solitary farm-house and its out-buildings. All round was pasture-land or mud-banks; scarcely another house was within sight. The corporation of the town of Stockton being unwilling or unable to provide accommodation for the rapidly increasing coal traffic, Mr. Edward Pease, in 1829, joined by a few of his Quaker friends, bought about 500 or 600 acres of land five miles lower down the river--the site of the modern Middlesborough--for the purpose of there forming a new sea-port for the shipment of coals brought to the Tees by the railway. The line was accordingly extended thither; docks were excavated; a town sprang up; churches, chapels, and schools were built, with a custom-house, mechanics' institute, banks, ship-building yards, and iron factories, and in a few years the port of Middlesborough became one of the most thriving on the northeast coast of England. In ten years a busy population of some 6000 persons (since swelled to about 25,000) occupied the site of the original farm-house. More recently, the discovery of vast stores of ironstone in the Cleveland Hills, close adjoining Middlesborough, has tended still more rapidly to augment the population and increase the commercial importance of the place. It is pleasing to relate, in connection with this great work--the Stockton and Darlington Railway, projected by Edward Pease and executed by George Stephenson--that when Mr. Stephenson became a prosperous and a celebrated man, he did not forget the friend who had taken him by the hand, and helped him on in his early days. He continued to remember Mr. Pease with gratitude and affection, and that gentleman, to the close of his life, was proud to exhibit a handsome gold watch, received as a gift from his celebrated _protégé_, bearing these words--"Esteem and gratitude: from George Stephenson to Edward Pease." [Illustration: MIDDLESBOROUGH-ON-TEES.] FOOTNOTES: [51] The act for constructing the Merthyr Tydvil Tram-road was obtained from Parliament as early as 1794; that for the Sirhoway Railroad in 1801; the Carmarthenshire Railroad was sanctioned in the same year; and the Oystermouth Railway in 1803. [52] Mr. Richardson was founder of the afterward well-known discount-house of Richardson, Overend, and Gurney, Lombard Street, London. [53] The first clause in any railway act empowering the employment of locomotive engines for the working of passenger traffic. [54] This incident, communicated to the author by the late Edward Pease, has since been made the subject of a fine picture by Mr. A. Rankley, A.R.A., exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1861.