beginning, no less than in the firmness of their abiding,
may most truly be said  to have in them the
characteristics of a Divine revelation.

A CORNISH GIANT.

NOTHING is perfected in a moment. It was
only Cadmus who could raise a crop of full-grown
men, ready armed and prepared for action,
without the preface of nurses and pedagogues;
but Cadmus was as exceptional as
his corps of Dragon's-teeth Volunteers. Elsewhere,
we find men and things with long
periods of infancy and immaturity — wherein
dwells the law of their growth; and steam and
railroads have had their times of gradual development
like the rest. They have not sprung
up in a night, nor grown to their perfection
in a generation. It is so long ago as 1602
that Mr. Beaumont, of Newcastle, first laid
down wooden rails for carriage traffic: an invention
improved by Mr. John Curr, in 1776, into
a cast-iron railway, nailed to wooden sleepers,
for the benefit of the Duke of Newcastle's
colliery at Sheffield. For this piece of interference
with the vested rights of ponderous
labour, Mr. John Curr was forced to fly, and
hide himself in a wood four days, in fear for his
life, which the colliers thought was better in
their keeping than in his. Steam has been still
longer in coming to its maturity. Steam was
one of the Century of Inventions published by
the Marquis of Worcester, generations ago;
hints of even earlier discoveries of the dangerous
properties of that elastic vapour, lie, half
hidden, half revealed, among the dust and
mildew of the past. Thus, both steam and
railroads have had a longer term of existence
than we generally give them credit for, and
have not risen all at once to their present full-blown
condition of vitality.

The railroad came to its majority first. While
tramroads were almost as good as they are now,
the carriages that ran on them were of barbarous
inequality. From the depths of his inner consciousness,
however, Leupold, a German philosopher,
did, in 1723, fashion out the idea
of a high-pressure steam-engine, which idea
he set down in good sound German letters
in the Theatrum Machinarum. The idea obtained
various supporters, conscious and unconscious.
Some projectors, certainly, wanted to
propel their railway carriages Chinese fashion,
by huge sails; but most of them proposed steam
power on the high-pressure system: mixing
this up, however, with an earlier and still more
favourite project— that of traction by steam on
common roads, without the aid of rails. This
was Savery's great dream; and Watt— who knew
nothing of Leupold's notion but who abhorred
the high-pressure principle — included this traction-engine
in the specification of his patent of
1769, almost at the same time as when Moore,
the London linendraper, took out his patent of
moving carriages by steam. Yet the first actual
steam-carriage was made by the Frenchman
Cugnot; but his model proved unruly, and
threw itself in a headlong manner over a wall,
wherefore it was considered dangerous, and
was suppressed accordingly. Then, in 1772,
Oliver Evans, an American, made a steam-carriage
for common roads; so did William
Symington, one of the inventors of steam-boats;
but neither creation came to any good. Symington's,
indeed, was exhibited at Edinburgh; but
the roads were so bad that it could not be used
or brought into any practical use. Two years
before this, in 1784, William Murdoch, assistant
of James Watt, made one on the high-pressure
principle, which went on three wheels, was
a foot high, and was worked by means of
a spirit-lamp. But the Lilliputian ran away
one night, and frightened the parish rector
out of his wits; he, being officially more versed
in demonology than in mechanics, taking it for
a fiery imp of Satan, that had escaped, roaring,
from his master. Finally, TREVITHICK, a valiant
Cornish man, with whom we have specially to do
in this paper, took the matter in hand.

Trevithick was a pupil of Murdoch's, and
though ignorant of Leupold, was nevertheless
as favourable to the high-pressure principle as
Watt was averse to it. He made a steam-carriage
for common roads, set it in motion, and
away went the creature, tearing like mad along
the road to Plymouth, breaking down walls, rushing
into the gardens of sober-minded gentlemen
intent only on their roses and their peaches,
careering through toll-gates flung open free of
pay by terrified tollmen — who thought that this,
too, was an invention and a device of Satan; perhaps
his ordinary chariot, with himself inside,
sitting among the live embers. As Trevithick
and one Vivian were steaming along the road,
the latter caught sight of a closed toll-bar, just
as they had torn down the front rails of a
gentleman's garden. " Captain" Vivian called
to his partner to slacken speed, which he
did, and came dead up to the gate, which was
opened like lightning by the toll-keeper.

"What have us got to pay?" asked Captain
Vivian, careful as to honesty if reckless as to
grammar.

"Na — na— na — na!" stammered the poor
man, trembling in every limb, with his teeth
chattering as if he had got the ague.

"What have us got to pay, I ask?"

"Na — noth— nothing to pay! My de — dear
Mr. Devil, do drive on as fast as ever you can!
Nothing to pay!" This story rests on the authority
of Coleridge; and, " if not true, is too
well found," as the Italians say, to be overlooked.

Trevithick's wonderful engine, after performing
such exploits, and generally choosing to
upset its passengers in a hedge, or over a
stone wall, midway to their destination, was exhibited
in London. Its owner and originator
showing it off, with wonderful effects, in Lord's
Cricket-ground: carrying it along the New-road
and Gray's Inn-lane, down to that coach-builder's
who had supplied the phaeton that ran with it.
The next day it was exhibited in a cutler's shop,