profession from his place at the instrument-maker's, the other was
beginning to enter it by the way of his trade. The engineer of to-
day is confronted with a library of acquired results; tables and
formulae to the value of folios full have been calculated and
recorded; and the student finds everywhere in front of him the
footprints of the pioneers. In the eighteenth century the field
was largely unexplored; the engineer must read with his own eyes
the face of nature; he arose a volunteer, from the workshop or the
mill, to undertake works which were at once inventions and
adventures. It was not a science then--it was a living art; and it
visibly grew under the eyes and between the hands of its
practitioners.

The charm of such an occupation was strongly felt by stepfather and
stepson. It chanced that Thomas Smith was a reformer; the
superiority of his proposed lamp and reflectors over open fires of
coal secured his appointment; and no sooner had he set his hand to
the task than the interest of that employment mastered him. The
vacant stage on which he was to act, and where all had yet to be
created--the greatness of the difficulties, the smallness of the
means intrusted him--would rouse a man of his disposition like a
call to battle. The lad introduced by marriage under his roof was
of a character to sympathise; the public usefulness of the service
would appeal to his judgment, the perpetual need for fresh
expedients stimulate his ingenuity. And there was another
attraction which, in the younger man at least, appealed to, and
perhaps first aroused, a profound and enduring sentiment of
romance: I mean the attraction of the life. The seas into which
his labours carried the new engineer were still scarce charted, the
coasts still dark; his way on shore was often far beyond the