cial results of the enterprise were considered satisfactory
from the opening of the railway. Besides conferring a great public
benefit upon the inhabitants of the district and throwing open entirely
new markets for coal, the profits derived from the traffic created by the
railway yielded increasing dividends to those who had risked their
capital in the undertaking, and thus held forth an encouragement to the
projectors of railways generally, which was not without an important
effect in stimulating the projection of similar enterprises in other
districts. These results, as displayed in the annual dividends, must
have been eminently encouraging to the astute commercial men of Liverpool
and Manchester, who were then engaged in the prosecution of their
railway. Indeed, the commercial success of the Stockton and Darlington
Company may be justly characterised as the turning-point of the railway
system.

Before leaving this subject, we cannot 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
farmhouse and its outbuildings. All round was pasture-land or mud-banks;
scarcely another house was within sight. In 1829 some of the principal
proprietors of the railway joined in the purchase of about 500 or 600
acres of land five miles below Stockton--the site of the modern
Middlesborough--for the purpose of there forming a new seaport 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, shipbuilding yards, and iron-factories. In
ten years a busy population of some 6000 persons (since increased to
about 23,000) occupied the site of the original farmhouse. {144} More
recently, the discovery of vast stores of ironstone in the Cleveland
Hills, closely 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 connexion 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