The steam engine familiarly explained and illustrated; with an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain maxims for railway speculators. By the Rev. Dionysius Lardner ... With additions and notes by James Renwick ...

PLAIN RULES FOR RAILWAY SPECULATORS. 307
scientific men are held, and the personal honours and rewards
which begin to be conferred upon them, all justify the
expectation that we are on the eve of mechanical discoveries
still greater than any which have yet appeared; and that the
steam engine itself, with the gigantic powers conferred upon
it by the immortal Watt, will dwindle into insignificance in
comparison with the hidden powers of nature still to be
revealed; and that the day will come when that machine,
which is now extending the blessings of civilization to the
most remote skirts of the globe, will cease to have existence
except in the page of history.
CHAPTER XIX.
PLAIN RULES FOR RAILWAY SPECULATORS.
(142.) FOR some time after the completion of the Liverpool and Manchester railway, doubts were entertained of
its ultimate success as a commercial speculation; and, even
still, after several years' continuance, some persons,re
found, skeptical by temperament, who have not acquired full
confidence in the permanency of its advantages. The possibility of sustaining a system of regular transport upon it,
with the unheard-of speed effected at the commencement of
the undertaking, was, for a long period, questioned by a
considerable portion even of the scientific world; and, after
that possibility was established, by the regular performance
of some years, the practicability of permanently profitable
work, at that rate of speed, was still doubted by many, and
altogether denied by some. The numerous difficulties to be
encountered, and the, enormous expense of locomotive power,
have been fully admitted by the directors in their semi