Invention and Discovery: Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches - Anonymous

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only 60 feet to complete.

      Meanwhile, the tunnel works proved a very attractive exhibition. In 1838, they were visited by 23,000 persons, and, in 1839, by 34,000. By Jan. 1841, the tunnel was completed from shore to shore—1140 feet, and Sir I. Brunel, on Aug. 13, was the first to pass through. On March 25, 1843, the tunnel was opened to the public, with a demonstration of triumph.

      The cost of the work has been nearly four times the sum at first contemplated; the actual expense being upwards of 600,000l. These, of course, are but a few data of the great work, the progress of which, for twenty years, interested every admirer of scientific enterprize. The engineering details present marvels of ingenuity. The building of the vast brick shaft, 50 feet in diameter, 42 feet in height, and 3 feet thick, with, set over it, the steam-engine for pumping out the water and raising the earth—and the sinking of the whole, en masse, into the Rotherhithe bank, were master-works of genius. Thus far the vertical shaft: the tunnel itself commenced with an excavation larger than the interior of the old House of Commons. But the great invention was the shield apparatus—the series of cells, in which, as the miners worked at one end, the bricklayers formed at the other the top, sides, and bottom of the tunnel. The dangers, too, were many: sometimes, portions of the frame would break, with the noise of a cannon-shot; then alarming cries were heard, as some irruption of earth or water poured in; the excavators were, however, much more inconvenienced by fire than water—gas explosions frequently wrapping the place with a sheet of flame, and strangely mingling with the water, and rendering the workmen insensible. Yet, with all these perils, but seven lives were lost in making the tunnel under the Thames; whereas, nearly forty men were killed in building the new London Bridge.—Note-book of 1848.

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      Sir John Herschel, when at the Cape of Good Hope, observed, on May 25, 1837, a spot upon the sun, the black centre of which would have allowed the globe of our earth to drop through it, leaving a thousand miles clear of contact on all sides of that tremendous gulf.

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      It was at Rome, on the 20th day of February, 1829, when he was finishing his eloquent work, The Last Days of a Philosopher, that Sir Humphry Davy received the final warning to prepare. By dictation, he wrote to his brother, who was at Malta with the British troops—"I am dying from a severe attack of palsy, which has seized the whole of the body, with the exception of the intellectual organ. I shall leave my bones in the Eternal City." But he was to die neither then nor there. Within three weeks, his brother was by his bedside, and found him as much interested in the anatomy and electricity of the torpedo as ever, though he bade Dr. Davy "not to be grieved" by his approaching dissolution. Yet, after a day of 150 pulse-beats, and only five breathings in a minute, and of the most distressing particular symptoms, he again revived. Shortly after this, Lady Davy arrived at Rome from England, with a copy of the second edition of Salmonia, which Sir Humphry received with peculiar pleasure. After some weeks of melancholy dalliance with the balmy spring air of the Campagna, the Albula Lake, the hills of Tivoli, and the banks of the Tiber, they travelled quietly round by Florence, Genoa, Turin, slowly threading the flowery, sweet-scented Alpine valleys, to Geneva, where he suddenly expired. It was three hours beyond midnight; his servant called his brother; his brother was in time to close his eyes. It was the 29th of May, in 1829.

      They buried him at Geneva. In truth, Geneva buried him herself, with serious and respectful ceremonial. A simple monument stands at the head of the hospitable grave. There is a tablet to his memory on the walls of Westminster Abbey. There is a monument also, at Penzance, his birth-place.

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      When the Count de Seze replied to an eloquent discourse of Cuvier, he stated that, "since the Restoration, Cuvier was the second example of fortunate combination of literature and science, and that he had been preceded only by that illustrious geometer, (the Marquis de Laplace), whom we may call the Newton of France." In referring to the European reputation of Cuvier, and to the vast extent and variety of his knowledge, he applied to him the happy observation which Fontenelle made respecting Leibnitz—that while the ancients made one Hercules out of several, we might, out of one Cuvier, make several philosophers.

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      The ordinary speed of George Stephenson's Killingworth engine, in 1814, was four miles an hour. In 1825, Mr. Wood, in his work on Railways, took the standard at six miles an hour, drawing 40 tons on a level; and so confident was he that he gauged the power of the locomotive, that he asserted—"nothing could do more harm towards the adoption of railways than the promulgation of such nonsense as that we shall see locomotive engines travelling at the rate of 12, 16, 18, and 20 miles an hour." The promulgator of such nonsense was George Stephenson. In 1829, it was estimated that, at 15 miles an hour, the gross load was 9–½ tons, and the net load very little; and that, therefore, high speed, if attainable, was perfectly useless. Before the end of that year, George Stephenson got with "the Rocket" a speed of 29–½ miles an hour, carrying a net load of 9–½ tons. In 1831, his engines were to draw 90 tons on a level, at 20 miles an hour.

      When the speed of the locomotive was set beyond question, prejudice then took the alarm about safety, and a very strong stand was from time to time made for a limitation of speed. Even after the year 1849, the London and Birmingham Directors considered that 20 miles an hour was enough; but the vigour of the broad gauge advocates has tripled the working power of the locomotive, and given us 60 miles an hour where we might have been lingering at 20.

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      Mr. Crawshay, of the Cyfarthfa Works, at a dinner given to him in 1847, by the people of Merthyr, related the following account of the rise of his family of "Iron Kings," as they are called.

      "My grandfather was the son of a most respectable farmer in Normanton, Yorkshire. At the age of 15, father and son differed. My grandfather, an enterprising boy, rode his own pony to London, then an arduous task of some fifteen or twenty days' travelling. On getting there, he found himself perfectly destitute of friends. He sold his pony for 15l.; and during the time that the proceeds of the pony kept him, he found employment in an iron warehouse of London, kept by Mr. Bicklewith. He hired himself for three years for 15l., the price of his pony. His occupation was to clean the counting-house, to put the desks in order, and to do anything else that he was told. By industry, integrity, and perseverance, he gained his master's favour, and was termed 'the Yorkshire Boy.' He had a very amiable and good master; and, before he had been two years in his place, he stood high in this just man's confidence. The trade in which he was engaged was only a cast-iron warehouse, and his master assigned to him, 'the Yorkshire Boy,' the privilege of selling flat irons—the things with which our shirts and clothes are flattened. The washerwomen of London were sharp folks; and when they bought one flat iron, they stole two. Mr. Bicklewith thought that the best person to cope with them would be a man working for his own interest—and a Yorkshireman at the same time. That was the first matter of trading that ever my grandfather embarked in. By honesty and perseverance, he continued to grow in favour. His master retired in a few years, and left my grandfather in possession of his cast-iron business in London, which was carried on on the very site where I now spend my days—in York Yard. My grandfather left his business in London, and came down here; and my father,

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