cal engineers of the day concurred in reporting substantially
in favour of the employment of fixed engines. Not a single professional
man of eminence supported the engineer in his preference for locomotive
over fixed engine power. He had scarcely an adherent, and the locomotive
system seemed on the eve of being abandoned. Still he did not despair.
With the profession as well as public opinion against him--for the most
frightful stories were abroad respecting the dangers, the unsightliness,
and the nuisance which the locomotive would create--Stephenson held to
his purpose. Even in this, apparently the darkest hour of the
locomotive, he did not hesitate to declare that locomotive railroads
would, before many years had passed, be "the great highways of the
world."

He urged his views upon the directors in all ways, and, as some of them
thought, at all seasons. He pointed out the greater convenience of
locomotive power for the purposes of a public highway, likening it to a
series of short unconnected chains, any one of which could be removed and
another substituted without interruption to the traffic; whereas the
fixed engine system might be regarded in the light of a continuous chain
extending between the two termini, the failure of any link of which would
derange the whole. {206} He represented to the Board that the locomotive
was yet capable of great improvements, if proper inducements were held
out to inventors and machinists to make them; and he pledged himself
that, if time were given him, he would construct an engine that should
satisfy their requirements, and prove itself capable of working heavy
loads along the railway with speed, regularity and safety. At length,
influenced by his persistent earnestness not less than by his arguments,
the directors, at the suggestion of Mr. Harrison, determined to offer a
prize of 500 pounds for the best locomotive engine, which, on a certain
day, should be produced on the railway, and perform certain specified
conditions in the most satisfactory manner. {207}

It was now felt that the fate of railways in a great measure depended
upon the issue of this appeal to the mechanical genius of England. When
the advertisement of the prize for the best locomotive was published,
scientific men began more particularly to direct their attention to the
new power which was thus struggling into existence. In the mean time
public opinion on the subject of railway working remained suspend