Lives of the Engineers, Vol. 1: With an Account of Their Principal Works; Comprising Also a History of Inland Communication in Britain (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Lives of the Engineers, Vol. 1: With an Account of Their Principal Works; Comprising Also a History of Inland Communication in Britain

The object of the following volumes is to give an account of some of the principal men by whom the material development of England has been promoted, - the men by whose skill and industry large tracts of fertile land have been won from the sea, the bog, and the fen, and made available for human habitation and sustenance; who have rendered the country accessible in all directions by means of roads, bridges, canals, and railways; and have built lighthouses, breakwaters, docks, and harbours, for the protection and accommodation of our vast home and foreign commerce.

Notwithstanding the national interest which might be supposed to belong to this branch of literature, it has hitherto received but little attention. When the author first mentioned to the late Mr. Robert Stephenson his intention of writing the Life of his father, that gentleman expressed strong doubts as to the possibility of rendering the subject sufficiently popular to attract the attention of the reading public. "The building of bridges, the excavation of tunnels, the making of roads and railways," he observed, "are mere mechanical matters, possessing no literary interest;" and in proof of this he referred to the 'Life of Telford' as "a work got up at great expense, but which had fallen still-born from the press."

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