of thraldom, and so made his escape by stealth,
ran many dangers, but finally cleared himself
and his liberty from the oppressive love
and veneration of the mountain patriots. On
the 9th of October, 1827, he returned to England,
bringing a pair of spurs as the sole remnant
of the colossal fortune made— but not
realised — in the Peruvian mines. But before he
returned he spent four years in Costa Rica, in
the countries now so well known as the route of
the Nicaraguan transit, and the scene of General
Walker's filibuster warfare. Here, he mined
and projected mines, had magnificent designs,
and foresaw many material improvements which
afterwards came to pass; but he realised no
permanent good for himself out of anything— not
though he had an estate with a mountain of
copper ore on it, from which he proposed to lay
down a railroad to the sea, that so the working
of it might be profitable.

After this return from South America, we
hear but little of Trevithick. All we know is,
that he prepared a petition to Parliament,
wherein, after distinctly stating his claims on
his country by reason of the superiority of his
machinery, he asks for some grant or remuneration.
The saving to the Cornish mines alone, by
the use of his engines, he calculates to be
£100,000 per annum: adding that but for his
invention many of these mines, which produce
£2,000,000 per annum, must have been
abandoned. Before presenting this petition,
Trevithick met with a moneyed partner, who supplied
him with the means of perfecting his " never-
ceasing inventions." And, as this was all he
wanted, the petition was laid on one side, and
never taken up again. In 1833 he died, at
Deptford, in Kent, and since then his name has
almost died out too. Mr. Hyde Clarke is the
only man who has attempted a sustained
biography of him, and his biography is not longer
than this notice. Though the Institution of
Civil Engineers offered a reward for a full
and sufficient biography of one of our greatest
of the craft, no one has yet come forward to
claim it. The reputation of Trevithick has
suffered, as often happens, because more practical
men took up his ideas, and worked them
into greater notice. It is well said by one of
his friends and greatest admirers, " his reputation
has been purposely kept back by the partisans
of Watt, on account of the high-pressure
engine; of Stephenson, on account of the locomotive;
and of Brunel, on account of the Thames
Tunnel. But as he was clearly the inventor
not only of the high-pressure steam-engine and
the steam-carriage, but also of that boiler without
which (or a modification of which) no steam
boat could have ventured to cross the Atlantic,
he has undoubtedly contributed more to the
physical progress of mankind than any other
individual of the present century." The first
part of this statement may be questioned; the
Stephensons and Brunels having been leading
members of the Institution when it offered a
prize for Trevithick's memoirs. Thanks to
Mr. Hyde Clarke, Mr. Edmonds, Mr. Neville
Burnard, and some others, we may hope for the
fuller recognition of his merits in days to come,
and the application to them of that famous old
motto, the best of its kind, " Let him who has
deserved it, bear the palm!"

Trevithick was born in 1771, in the parish of
Sllogan, in Penwith, the most western hundred
of Cornwall. His father was a purser of the
mines, and one day was not a little amazed when
his son Richard, not yet twenty-one, and by no
means learned, was made engineer to several
mines— rather a more responsible situation than
the one the father himself held. It is said that
he remonstrated with the gentleman proposers,
but they had their own ideas, and Richard was
appointed. The lad was not well educated in
common things: that is certain. He could not
speak good English; he could never write a good
hand; he was backward in figures, and he knew
but little save his own special subject. But he
was sufficiently colossal there. In person he
was tall and finely made; six feet high, and
broad in proportion. His muscular strength was
remarkable, for he could lift two blocks of tin,
placed one above the other, and weighing seven
hundred-weight. His manners were blunt but
unassuming, and his dress was somewhat
peculiar for the time and mode: a dress-coat
with the skirts very broad, broad trousers:
all his clothes made loose. In this small matter,
as in larger matters, he went before public
opinion and the time. He married and had
children, as became a good citizen; had his
picture painted by Linnell (now in the South
Kensington Museum), and his bust done in
marble by Neville Burnard; but he has had no
statue, no monument, no biography, and his
name is hardly known even by vague report, to
people to whom Watt, Stephenson, and Brunel
are household words. This is not just; not a
meet division of that golden ore of fame which
all brave men and gallant souls have the right
to demand from posterity and their own
generation alike, where they have done their work
well, and have borne the heat of the day without
flinching. When will Trevithick have done
for him what Stephenson, and Watt, and Crompton,
and Arkwright, have had done for them,
that so the world may know what manner of
man he was, and may learn the guise under
which his spirit lived, while his body dwelt
upon the earth? His history is a good subject
for a biographer; that South American time
alone is, in itself, a romance, and his sons, who
are still alive, could possibly furnish material
for a pleasant volume.

FAIRY LORE.

GLAD were the children when their glowing faces
    Gathered about us in the winter night,
And now, with gleesome hearts in verdant places,
    We see them leaping in the summer light;

For they remember yet the tales we told them
    Around the hearth, of fairies long ago,
When they could only look out to behold them,
    Quick dancing, earthward, in the feathery snow.