were first paid to him for the labour of a week. labour in the turnip field, from his watching Mrs. | brian colliery, who rejoiced when twelve shillings Ainslie's cows onwards through the gradations of engine stoking, upwards to the position of engineer, to his responsibility as engine-wright, through allhis struggling with costly patents to mature his grand plans, to his achievements with the Blucher engine at Killingworth, his success on the Stockton and Darlington line, his triumphant opening of the Liverpool and Manchester line, his great victory over engineers, lawyers, and statesmen, on the speed of his engines-and the pressure of business produced by this Liverpool and Manchester success he was never charged with doing a mean or shabby action; there was no speck on his character, and no spot on his memory. A kind and sympathising heart tinged all his domestic and neighbourly intercourse with an air of gentleness, not then always or often observed in the mining districts; and yet he was a man of great activity and personal strength-fond of athletic games, and skilful in that class of exercises. His first savings were expended after his wife's death in supporting his parents. All his relatives were indebted to him for willing help over rough places in life. His anxiety for the advancement and the education of his son, Robert, was a pleasant feature in his character. His open mindedness to his old neighbours and fellow-workmen, was not more remarkable than the amenity with which he passed, in his latter years, to the cottage from the palace-at home in both. Rich as he was, in comparison with the miners of Killingworth, yet it was not what he could do for them, so much as the manner of doing it, that won their esteem. His interest in the education of the working classes arose in part from his own struggles in youth. They induced him to clear away the debt of the Newcastle Institution. They led to his active and personal exertions for the success of mechanics' institutions; and the urbanity wherewith his aid was given to others, in the circumstances that he once occupied, was probably the best way of showing gratitude for the issue of his own struggles in life. He gathered up the fragments of time so that nothing might be lost. While discharging, in a most exemplary manner, all the duties of life, he found leisure, after working hours, to do many things which other workmen imagine that they have never leisure to perform. A robust constitution may have helped him in these achieve ments; but it only backed the earnest mind. He lived with an object. He was a man with a pur. pose. He had promised to himself, at least, that over all the world, in time, and in his own country soon, it should be cheaper for working men to ride than to walk. The promise was kept, and all the healthful tendencies of its fulfilment are owing to the resolution of an engineer at a small Northum George Stephenson cannot be named in his public capacity as a representative man, for that he was not. He stands out alone in our me chanical history, or nearly alone, because he was gifted with a mind peculiarly qualified for the work written to be done in his destiny. In his private capacity he was a representative man. his youth he represented that numerous and strong class of men in this country, who discharge all their domestic duties in an unexceptionable manner, and among whom more acts of self-denial occur; and of liberality the most substantial, because it involves these acts of self-denial; than many persons in other classes believe, or have any means to know. In after years he continued to be a representive man, of a less numerous class, who have cut their way honestly and uprightly from the ranks of labour to those of consideration and wealth, but who never forget the way in which they walked, and those who walked with them in youth. He was a thorough gentleman when his young wife lived and died in their cottage at Killingworth, and he was not less nor more so when Mrs. Ainslie's herd than the engine stoker, and next the enginewright, became the companion of statesmen and the guest of kings. In all circumstances and places he was sustained by the noble stay the conviction that he was doing right. That was his great support, when all seemed dark and doubtful. It upheld him when lawyers, who lived to hurry down upon his rails to assizes, at forty miles an hour of speed, sneered at his ignorance because he talked of ten miles an hour. It failed him not when the Liverpool and Manchester line was nearly murdered by twenty-one fixed engines. It carried him through all difficulties, as it will carry others, better than a bridge of gold. He The nature of the man qualified him to meet all classes of of society. He felt that he deserved well of the country; because he was an intelligent man, and saw clearer than others what he had been doing, through his life. He came through the trial of the railway mania with clean hands. had deceived no party. He had earned no wealth in exchange for nothing. He had misled no shareholders. Therefore, when high names fell into disrepute among railway circles, he stood before the world an honest man, who had not allowed a shadow to compromise his character, or pass over his fair fame. He resisted the tempations of his situation, and he came out of the trial stainless. Few biographies are more pleasant than Mr. Smiles's work; and we trust that it may become a standard book among the libraries open to mechanics, as it certainly will become in the private libraries of this and other lands. BROKEN MEMORIES. Broken memories of many a heart CHAPTER XII. A LOVE AND A LIFE: THE HISTORY OF A CASTAWAY. Da souvenir en souvenir, J'ai reconstruit mon edince.-Beranger. For he had been a sinful man, And never, since his life began, Had bowed him to control; Perchance his temper was too rude; I ONCE in these sketches mentioned a friend long ago lost to me—a man who sought to live by his inkstand, and died in early youth, young in years, old in sorrow, in the heart of this great town. I need hardly say I recur to poor Walter Cheyne. Ere he died he requested my acceptance, in default of something better, of sundry MSS. as a parting gift. "Possibly," said he, "You may be able to turn the events therein shadowed forth to better account than I have done, and, what is better still, this will give you a truer insight into my life history for the last two years than any words of mine now could do." This conversation occurred but a very few hours before his death. The box containing the MSS. lies open on my table now. Of these same old papers, those that relate to Walter only are now sacred to friendship, and for friendship's eye alone. It would be a kind of profanation to send them, with all their imperfections, through the press almost sacrilege to show, perhaps to careless eyes, all the passionate heart-throbs of a friend who is now at rest under the cool, green sward. But there are other MSS. of his, containing other hearthistories than his own. There lies one. Perhaps it is a mere fiction; perhaps it is a blended memory of the events of his own and another's life; or perhaps—as I am inclined to believe-it is a true narrative, written from his own or another's personal knowledge of facts which have occurred before to-day, and will again, till the end of time. As in Walter Cheyne's MS. this life-history is composed rather of unconnected fragments and loose speculations than of any consecutive narrative, I will try my hand at adorning a tale, even though I fail in trying "to point a moral"-and there is, or should be, one in this forthcoming history-for its hero was a man meant for better things, though he "passed away and made no sign." lasts constitutes the sum of the duty of man. As the only son of one of England's merchant-princes, he had every reason to look forward to a cloudless fortune for his father's name was, in city parlance, "good as gold," and no one in those days could imagine that a time would come when the names of Trevor and Co. on a bill would not be worth the paper whereon they were written. That time, however, did come. Mr. Trevor's house disgracefully failed, and with a wreck of his once fine fortune the ruined merchant retired to a sequestered of a broken heart. Young Trevor, who, at the time village in North Wales, where he shortly after died of his father's failure, was at Harrow, was removed immediately after that catastrophe, and at the time loss of early home, town and country house, serof his father's death had become resigned to the and vanities of this wicked world," as we learn to vants, carriages, horses, and all the other " pomps nickname them in our catechism-though it is doubtful if that same confession materially affects our appreciation of them in after life. And in North Wales, on a small settlement of his mother's as his -for his father had married when he could ill afford to settle anything considerable on his wife -Richard Trevor and that lady lived as they best might. She could not part from Richard; he tutor, finish his education at home; and so he could easily, with the good curate of Mspent a few hours every morning over his Greek and Latin in their little back-room, and the afternoon in wandering by brook-sides with a fly-rod in his hand and a pipe in his mouth, till, from force he became a dreamer. And the widow, in her of circumstances, being a youth of reflective turn, one-sided love of her wild boy, was well content that he should so waste his time and talents in an out-of-the-way village, if by that means she could only keep him at her apron-strings. Not so his tutor, who, seeing his young pupil possessed a mind weary of impressing upon the widow the gravity of powerful calibre, if well directed, was never much talent to run to waste at home. of the sin of which she was guilty, in allowing so But whatcertain it is that, just then, he loved his poor, ever ambition Trevor may have then entertained, pale, widowed mother far too well to wish to leave her. It was, however, directed otherwise. Even in those days of coaches, North Wales was, in vacation time, a kind of Tempe to University men on reading tours; and with one of these, a Fellow of College, Oxford, young Trevor formed a six weeks' acquaintance, which was productive of more things than long walks and flyfishing. George Manley, the erudite Oxford man, and Richard Trevor, the shy, dreamy youth, had many tastes in common, and each was soon satisfied on one point, namely, that his friend was a man worth knowing; and, more particularly, that Trevor was foolish indeed if he were contented to idle away his life in Wales, when the world was all before him. "A sentence has formed a character," says that sage enunciator of trite platitudes, Mr. Martin Tupper; a few sentences of Manley's in some degree determined Trevor's path in life. To London he must go-some profession he must choose. Manley spoke of the bar-Mrs. Trevor suggested the church; but the curate, who knew his pupil's disposition only a little better than his mother, gave a casting vote in favour of Manley's recommendation—and accordingly, in a few months' time, after many tears, Mrs. Trevor consented to part with her dear boy, and Richard Trevor went to London, to be pupil to a special pleader, and to exchange the comforts of a quiet village home for lodgings in a "three-pair back" in London, with such an allowance as the widow could scrape together for him out of her lean annuity. A sad evening for poor Mrs. Trevor was that which followed the winter's morning when she saw Richard wave his last adieu from the box-seat of the London coach, as it wound along the hill, ere it was lost to the sight of the sorrowful mother, who felt that her life was now a blank for some time to come. Nevertheless, in a short time her maternal anxiety was greatly relieved by the receipt of sundry letters, crossed and re-crossed, from her son, saying that he was comfortably settled in respectable lodgings-was reading hard at night, and working all day in the pleader's office, and had no doubt he would, in a few years, be in a position to raise their fallen fortunes. Now Richard Trevor, like most very young men of talent and little knowledge of the world, was. about as great an egotist as ever succeeded in self-deception. For a while he worked steadily enough; but law was too hard and exact a study for one who had a poetheart. I think that, wherever cacoëthes scribendi exists, however undeveloped it may be from adverse accidents, it is sure, sooner or later, to swallow up everything else, after the manner of Aaron's rod. So he became, step by step, day by day, a scribbler -wrote morbid verses (which seem now like the echoes of a wail long hushed in death), sent them to magazines, received them back in some cases with that hateful "declined with thanks" endorsed thereon, and occasionally had the satisfaction of appearing in print, to make blue-stockings wonder who "R. T.," who wrote such strange, sad strains, could be. In this one respect only did he evince any steadfastness of purpose, and in a short time he was rewarded for his pains by the insertion of one of his most dreary articles in a first-class periodical-a piece of good luck which was followed up by an engagement as paid contributor thereto. So Richard Trevor made up his mind that he was destined to write "something the world would not willingly let die" (a delusion which is too often a sure sign-post to a workhouse), and became a literary man from that day forth. It was a great disappointment to his mother when the self-willed young man wrote down to her that he intended to give up all ideas of going to the bar, as he had a soul far above legal chicanery, &c., &c., and was sure that his dear mother would never wish to thwart his laudable aspirations. And the little widow, who had sorely pinched herself to pay the pleader's premium, wiped her eyes, and wrote back a loving reply, that she hoped he would succeed in his new calling, and was delighted to find that she had so clever a son. Amiable enthusiast! gentle, loving mother!-alas! that all these aspirations should tend only to misery and a broken heart! If Richard Trevor's vanity had ever allowed him to think dispassionately on any one subject connected with self-interest, he would have acknowledged to his own heart that there are certain qualities necessary to success in literature, without which no amount of mere irregular talent can be of any avail-and these he lacked. For to succeed in the republic of letters, where every author is an Ishmaelite, "his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him," something more is requisite than the "fatal facility" of expressionsomething more than a capability for producing airy magazine articles. And this is one of the reasons why authorship has been so grievously belied by its disappointed votaries, who, beginning life with erroneous ideas as to its duties and requirements, find too late that talent, unaided by aught nobler, can never produce for its possessor anything but self-contempt and bitterness. So they fail miserably, while men more earnest, if less talented, pass them by; and then, because they have so failed, too vain to acknowledge that the fault lies at their own door, they inveigh against earth's noblest calling, of which they have been such craven-hearted followers! Had Trevor been a wiser man, he would have seen that, although a gifted dreamer may conceive, he must be a worker indeed who would execute. And a dreamer was he in the fullest acceptation of that comprehensive term. "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel," said the patriarch Jacob to Reuben; and of a truth there be many Reubens yet upon the earth, if few Jacobs. Flattered on all sides by men inferior to him in intellect, spoiled by The worthlessness of common praise - what wonder if he became an idle egotist, who was always going to do everything, and always occupied in thinking of something, and doing nothing? But, with all his faults, he was a clever man, and soon perceived that he was wasting his talents. He went to work once more-wrote a few stray stanzas in different periodicals, which gained for him an ephemeral reputation, such as is gained by the thousand and one writers whose names are on men's lips for a week, and forgotten in a fort- | to them at supper tables-for sentiment must eat, night. At this time he became acquainted with several clever men of mark, whose society soon convinced him that he was not quite such a genius as he had imagined-men who, while they acknowledged his abilities, deplored his perversity and egotism, and gave little quarter to either. And thus at last, after a long struggle with his boyish vanity, he resolved to amend his ways, and, once more casting aside his early folly, worked steadily and gained such success as his immature efforts deserved. So much for his start as a literary man. After an absence of some three years, which seemed a whole lifetime to his mother, he went down to M to spend a month with her, taking down with him more magazines, containing compositions of his own, of course, than I should like to have read in double that time. Very delightful evenings, whatever third parties may have said, were they on which the widow and her boy sat téte-à-tête in the little cottage, when tea was brought in and the curtains drawn, and Mr. Richard Trevor condescended to listen to her kindly criticisms and maternal laudations of his poetry and prose. Then a few neighbours would drop in to see the literary lion of M- -; good, honest souls, whose reading was confined to a few old newspapers, and the "Life of Lord Nelson," with other irreproachable John Bullish works of like tendency, and who, understanding but half of what the young man said, applauded all his absurd crotchets to the echo, till even he, when they were gone, would sneer at them and their fulsome flatteries. The month expired, and he returned to London, and once more taking up his pen, seemed likely to distinguish himself. But no-he must do everything. Political tracts, dreary reveries, crude essays, biting satires, strange wild strains of sad poetry, all flowed from his pen in quick succession -and if ever a man illustrated to a nicety the backnied axiom, aliquis in omnibus, nullus in singulis, Richard Trevor was that most luckless biped. But all this savours too much of a back-parlour in Paternoster-row to please my readers, who care for other vanities far more than for all the "psychological inquiries," as Coleridge would have phrased it, that a reverist could string together in a twelvemonth. Trevor was externally about the last person one could imagine likely to love or be loved; so, at least, said the few young ladies of his acquaintance; for this man was to the day of death a victim to one long misunderstanding on the part of the fair sex-and I see nothing at all remarkable in this; for, to speak in the first person singular, ex cathedrá, I have generally found, during my own brief experience of life, that the men whose names are whispered lovingly by young ladies in confidential dialogues-the men whom mammas like to see hanging about their drawingrooms and daughters at the piano, or sitting next we know are they whose knowledge is limited to the superficial agrèmens of society-who can talk with equal assurance on every object, from the last new novel to the last new bishop-from the last concert in the Hanover Square Rooms, to the last meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Exeter Hall; whisperers of polite insipidities-white kid Adonises, whose exquisite waltzing, costume, and inexhaustible flow of small talk atone, in the eyes of the many, for the manifold defects of heart and head they may exhibit to the few. But what has all this to do with Richard Trevor? Everything; for, whenever he went into ladies' society, he was forced to apply these ob servations to his own experience; and the consequence was that, as he became more aware of his defects, he became also more awkward and less inclined to make himself agreeable-which, upon occasion, and when he thought it worth his while, he could do well enough, though in a fashion peculiar to himself. Nevertheless, this Orson of our nineteenth century, who flattered himself that no woman could ever disturb his peace, was destined to be tamed, and by a very quiet little conqueror too. And this wonderful event fell out on this wise among Trevor's London acquaintance was numbered a Mrs. Tytherleigh, an old school friend of his mother's, and, like her, a widow; this lady had one daughter, pretty little girl of nineteen, and with her Trevor soon struck up what mamma called a flirtation, and what he called-a Platonic attachment: : Oh Plato! Plato! you have paved the way nonsense, or what you please-I forget the pas- And what thought she of her admirer? Now Richard Trevor neither danced, sang, pleaded guilty to a love of small talk, nor was in any way an Adonis-tout au contraire, fair reader mine, and Jane thought him as queer a specimen of nature's handiwork as Gulliver must have thought the Yahoo on first acquaintance. Possibly, first impressions are oftentimes wrong; possibly Jane and Gulliver were both mistaken. Now, here I beg that, because my hero had a boorish contempt for people who could dance, etc., etc., you will not take it into your heads that I myself am assuredly a Goth, who share his opinions, or rather cloak my own behind him. I cry you mercy, ladies, one and all; do not wrong me by such a supposition. I am as ready to admit, as any of you can be to demand such admission, that a disinclination to make oneself agreeable, in the drawing-room sense, is by no means an indication of genius, but those two people, if found, could not present a on the contrary, too often of mere bad taste, or greater contrast than did Richard Trevor and Jane an ill-concealed sense of awkwardness. I know Tytherleigh to a third party; she quict, gentle, well that there is such a thing as "the pride that yet with that strength in weakness which often apes humility," in other places beside Coleridge's distinguishes such natures-looking at things as "Devil's Walk." Still, on the other hand, I do they are-never for a moment blinking a truth, say that it is cruelly unjust to suppose, as I dare though it cost her dear-superficially cold and say many of you do—and will-though I wrote careless, with a warm woman's heart, nevertheless, my pen down to the stump to convince you underlying the almost repulsive manner-and he of your mistake because Trevor could not, like an (at least, when he was in society where he felt at every-day fop, dance the polka gracefully, simper home, for when this was not the case he was sweet nothings, for the sake of showing the white- taciturn and almost sullen), talkative, argumenta. ness of his teeth, or lead a young lady to a settee, tive, frank on some points to the verge of indeli without getting up an impromptu flirtation, on cacy-in others reserved almost to closenessthe strength of a ten minutes' acquaintance, that externally a man whom nothing could long trouble he was a Yahoo, or a gloomy "kill-joy, to whom or impress, but in reality one whose feelings, so pink-edged billets should never be sent, on any often masked under a cold, contemptuous levity, pretence whatsoever. Yet, so society, that great would on rare occasions force a way to the surface, humbug, decrees in the plenitude of its wisdom, and and prove that there was an angel-side, even to utter dearth of charity. that odd unpromising character, with all its pride and bitterness. Such were Jane and Trevor in those days. I almost wish I had never begun this story, for sorrow must soon be closing darkly over all. Richard Trevor loved Jane Tytherleigh; but I have forgotten to say how great a change for the better that love produced in him. Without ever having been a thoroughly vicious man, he had still in a measure been mixed up with vice by association-and, like all who have passed through the fiery ordeal of a London life, had not, like Shadrach from his " 'fiery furnace," come out thence unscathed. There is, I think, in the heart of every true man in his youth a yearning for sympathy-a wish to love and be loved in turn, if only for the sake of escaping from one's coarser nature, by transferring one's thoughts-too apt at all times, from concentration, to grow selfish-to another-and she, some fair, gentle girl, such an one as has inspired half that is good, truthful, and pure, in the strains of every poet, from Chaucer down to Byron. While a man has reason to love purely and truly, he can never become utterly bad in any other respect; "Blessed," said Bulwer, "is the woman who exalts." How many of us can thankfully reecho that sentiment to-night! I believe the first cause of Trevor's love for Jane, however conceited he might be, was that, while Mrs. Tytherleigh and her guests were never sick of flattering him, her daughter showed more knowledge of character and better taste by confining her conversation to general topics, and proving to Trevor thereby that she thought him too true a man to be flattered by any outrageous appeal to his vanity. And yet she saw he was proud, even while he affected humility-proud of somethingshe knew not what; certainly not good looks, for he was a very plain man; still, without knowing of what he was proud, she benevolently resolved to pique his vanity, if possible; and she succeeded, and repented of the success when such repentance was of no avail. If any person were to search both hemispheres for two people dissimilar in almost everything, Did she love him? My answer will be, just as much as any of you, my fair readers, love the young gentleman who has been sitting on the sofa beside you, carrying on a desperate flirtation for the last half hour-and no more! Not that for one mo• ment I mean to convey that Trevor was that most contemptible of mortals, a male flirt; for with all his failings, he was far too good for that sort of legal misdemeanour, the obtaining of hearts under false pretences. It was not her nature, if it was his, to fall in love too soon. Nevertheless, she had already made up her mind that Trevor, though decidedly an original, cast in a very rough mould, was something better than he seemed, and might, under skilful treatment improve wonderfully. And seeing that he truly loved her-remember that I am drawing a woman, and not an angel, or any other abstraction of fancy-she, with a woman's love of conquest, determined to try her hand on the most uninviting sample of male humanity she had ever encountered in her mother's drawing. room. And he saw through this amiable intention, and, with that perversity, which was at once his characteristic and his bane, resolved to make him self out to be far worse than he really was, in order that he might eventually see whether Miss Tytherleigh thought him better; which plan, however ingenious, I would not recommend any other young gentleman, similarly circumstanced, to try, if he values his peace of mind; for young ladies are at all times prone to jump at conclusions, and possibly the conclusion arrived at may be unfavourable to the luckless adventurer. Now, quiet, little, keen-witted Miss Ty herleigh instantly saw through poor Trevor's elaborate device, and she determined to mortify his vanity by acting as though she took him at his word-a |