The younger Brunel’s first great work was the Clifton Suspension Bridge, followed by docks at Bristol and Sunderland, and several colliery tramways. In 1835, he was appointed engineer of the Great Western Railway, being then only about twenty-eight years of age, but skilful and ingenious, and anxious to strike out an entirely new course in railway engineering. He adopted the broad-gauge, then a great and novel enterprise, but now ascertained to be unnecessary: the works were unusually costly, and so novel that the line was called the Grand Experimental Railway; while it rendered Brunel famous as a railway engineer. He next attempted the atmospheric principle; but this proved unsuccessful, and the loss exceeded half a million of money. His last and greatest railway engineering achievements were his “bowstring-girder” bridges at Chepstow and Saltash: the latter has two wrought-iron tubes, each weighing upwards of 1000 tons, and the viaduct and bridge are nearly half a mile, or 300 feet longer than the Britannia bridge. The central Saltash pier foundations, upon solid rock, 90 feet below the surface of the river, were laid within a wrought-iron cylinder 37 feet in diameter and 100 feet high, and the whole work involved six years’ toil, anxiety, and peril. Next, Brunel devised an iron-plated armed ship capable of withstanding the fire of the Sebastopol forts; but his grand triumphs as a naval engineer were, the _Great Western_, steam-ship, propelled by paddle-wheels; and the _Great Britain_, propelled by a screw; but these were thrown into the shade by his _Great Eastern_, combining the powers of the paddle-wheel and the screw; and which, with the aid of Mr. Scott Russell, its builder, was completed and launched,—the largest ship that has ever floated. But this stupendous labour had undermined Mr. Brunel’s health; he was seized with paralysis, and died at the comparatively early age of fifty-three.[100] Of Brunel’s great engineering skill there can be no question; he loved difficulties and engineering perils: he has been styled “the Michael Angelo of Railways;” and his victory in “the Battle of the Gauges” gained him extraordinary prominence in the railway world. His ruling passion was magnitude, without regard to cost: “he was the very Napoleon of engineers, thinking more of glory than of profit, and of victory than of dividends.” Capitalists subscribed to his projects freely, and he put his own savings into the same risks; if shareholders suffered, he suffered with them; and it must be conceded that both railway travelling and steam navigation have been greatly advanced by the speculative ability of Mr. Brunel’s Titanic labours.