on began to multiply over the country. The first
authorised by Act of Parliament was the Surrey Railway in 1801. Twenty
years later twenty lines of railway were in operation.

About this time, too, another man of note and of great scientific and
mechanical sagacity lent his powerful aid to advance the interests of
the railway cause. This was Charles Maclaren, of Edinburgh, editor of
the _Scotsman_ newspaper for nearly thirty years. He had long foreseen,
and boldly asserted his belief in, the certain success of steam
locomotion by rail, at a time when opinions such as his were scouted as
wild delusive dreams. But he did more, he brought his able pen to bear
on the subject, and in December 1825 published a series of articles in
the _Scotsman_ on the subject of railways, which were not only
extensively quoted and republished in this country and in America, but
were deemed worthy of being translated into French and German, and so
disseminated over Europe. Mr Maclaren was thus among the foremost of
those who gave a telling impulse to the cause at that critical period
when the Iron horse was about to be put on the rail--the right horse in
the right place--for it was not many years afterwards that that
auspicious event took place. Mr Maclaren not only advocated generally
the adoption of railways, but logically demonstrated the wonderful
powers and capacities of the steam locomotive, arguing, from the
experiments on friction made more than half a century before by Vince
and Colomb, that by the use of steam-power on railroads a much more
rapid and cheaper transit of persons as well as merchandise might be
confidently anticipated. He leaped far ahead of many of even the most
hopeful advocates of the cause, and with almost prophetic foresight
wrote, "there is scarcely any limit to the rapidity of movement these
iron pathways will enable us to command." And again,--"We have spoken
of vehicles travelling at twenty miles an hour; but we see no reason for
thinking that, in the progress of improvement, a much higher velocity
might not be found practicable; and in twenty years hence a shopkeeper
or mechanic, on the most ordinary occasion, may probably travel with a
speed that would leave the fleetest courser behind." Wonderful words
these! At a first glance we may not deem them so, being so familiar
with the ideas which they convey, but our estimate of them will be more
just if we reflect that when they were penned railways ha