of learning concealed in ancient manuscripts. In 1556 and subsequent years many works of great importance issued from his establishment. He was accounted the ablest Grecian of his time, and published correct and beautiful editions of the best Greek writers. In 1572 appeared his famous Thesaurus of the Greek language, in 5 vols. folio—a work of transcendant merit, and which, as has been truly remarked, made an epoch in the history of Greek philology. In this publication Stephens had sunk nearly all his capital, and his assistant Scapula having disingenuously published an abridgment of it, the sale of the Thesaurus was stopped, its author became involved in difficulties—in fact was all but irretrievably ruined. The subsequent career of the great printer was marked by increasing misfortunes, although he enjoyed a temporary gleam of prosperity in the friendship of the French sovereign, during the continuance of which he spent much of his time at Paris, neglecting his own establishment at Geneva. In 1597 he finally left the latter place for France, and died the following year, a forlorn and solitary wanderer, at the advanced age of seventy, in the public hospital of Lyons.
Stephens, Robert, tertius, son of Robert Stephens, secundus, wrought in the printing establishment belonging to his father, from 1606 till 1631. He published a number of works, and also distinguished himself as an author.
Stephens, Paul, son of Henry Stephens, secundus, was born at Geneva in 1566, and carried on there his father's business, conducting it with untiring industry and energy from 1599 to 1627. During that period he issued a large number of publications, among which may be mentioned, as specially redounding to his credit, editions of the dramas of Euripides and Sophocles. His last production was an edition of the Greek lyric poets in 1626. The following year he sold his establishment. Nothing is known of his subsequent history, or of the time of his decease.
Stephens, Francis, secundus, was the son of Robert Stephens, primus, and, like the rest of the family, was a good classical scholar. After his father's death he established at Geneva a printing-office, which he conducted on his own responsibility for a number of years. He was not, however, very successful; and in 1582 gave up the business and went to reside in Normandy. Little more is ascertained regarding him.
Stephens, Antony, son of Paul Stephens, and the last of this family of scholars and printers, was born at Geneva in 1592. Having completed his education at Paris, he there abjured protestantism and embraced the Roman catholic faith. He adopted the profession of his ancestors, and received the title of royal printer. His earliest work dates from 1613, and for many years he carried on the business with hereditary zeal and ardour. But various circumstances afterwards conspired to plunge him in difficulties; and reduced at last to destitution, he died at Paris in 1674. All his children had predeceased him.—J. J.
STEPHENS, Alexander, a miscellaneous writer, was a native of Elgin, and was born in the year 1757. After receiving the usual preliminary training in the grammar-school of his native town, he completed his education at the university of Aberdeen. He was a contributor to the Monthly Magazine and other periodicals; and was the author of a "History of the War of the French Revolution;" "Memoirs of Horne Tooke;" "Public Characters," &c. He died in 1821.—J. T.
* STEPHENS, John L. , an enterprising American traveller. In 1837 he published "Travels in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy Land;" and in the following year, "Travels in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland." These works are marked by shrewdness and sprightliness, but exhibit also occasional offences against good taste. More sober and much more important as a contribution to general knowledge are his "Incidents of travel in Central America," the results of a journey performed in 1839, when Mr. Stephens was invested with an official character by the United States government. This work is copiously illustrated from Mr. Catherwood's drawings. In 1843 appeared "Incidents of travel in Yucatan," a supplement to the last-named book, abounding in curious particulars of ancient American remains, including no less than forty-four ruined cities. This book is also handsomely illustrated with plates, which are extremely curious and interesting.—R. H.
STEPHENSON, George, the father of the modern railway system, was born at Wylam, about eight miles west of Newcastle-on-Tyne, on the 9th of June, 1781, and died at Tapton house, near Chesterfield, on the 12th of August, 1848. He was the second of the six children of a good and honest workman, Robert Stephenson, then fireman of the pumping engine of Wylam colliery. In his childhood he received no school education, and was employed successively as a cowherd, a ploughboy, and a driver of gin-horses. During that time, however, he showed a taste for practical mechanics by modelling in clay the steam-engines which he saw in the neighbourhood, and about which it was his ambition to be employed. At the age of fourteen he obtained the first step towards the fulfilling of his wishes, by being engaged to assist his father, then fireman at Dewley. From that time forth his advancement was rapid, owing to his great energy, intelligence, and perseverance. At the age of fifteen he was employed as a fireman; at seventeen he was promoted to the duty of "plug-man," that is to say, to the care of the pumping apparatus of an engine; and at twenty, he was further promoted to the duty of "brakesman," that is, to the care of the working and regulation of the speed of a winding-engine. He was noted for his strength, activity, and courage, and his dexterity in bodily exercises, as well as for his skill in various handicrafts, such as shoemaking, the cutting out of clothes, and the cleaning and mending of clocks, by which trades he was enabled to add a little to his small earnings. By manual labour and personal observation he acquired much practical knowledge of the steam-engines, and other machinery, used in his native district. Becoming sensible of the great disadvantages under which he suffered from the want of book-knowledge, he applied himself, about the age of eighteen, to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, by attending classes after working hours, and studying even during the day in his short intervals of leisure; and having mastered the elements of learning, he eagerly sought after every sort of knowledge. In 1802 he was appointed to the care of the winding steam-engine of the inclined plane at Willington quay, on the Tyne, below Newcastle; and on the 28th of November of that year he married Frances Henderson. On the 16th of October, 1803, his son Robert was born; and in the course of the following year he had the misfortune to lose his wife. In 1804 he became brakesman at West-Moor colliery, Killingworth. He quitted that situation for a time to superintend the working of a steam-engine at Montrose, in Scotland, but returned to it after a short absence. About this time his father, having lost his eyesight by an accident, became dependent upon him for support. About 1807 or 1808 he was drawn by ballot for the militia, and his whole savings were swept away in providing a substitute. He had thoughts of emigrating to the United States, but had not the means of paying the expense. In 1810, having offered to repair and render efficient a pumping engine at Killingworth high pit, which had got out of order, he succeeded so well that he at once obtained a high reputation in the neighbourhood as an "engine-doctor." In 1812 he was appointed "engine-wright," or principal mechanical engineer, of Killingworth colliery. He soon afterwards began to turn his attention to the locomotive engine, which had already been for some time in use on mineral railways. The first suggestion of the use of the steam-engine for locomotion on land is ascribed to Savery. Watt, in consequence of a suggestion made by Robison in 1759, took patents in 1769 and 1784 for the application of his steam-engine to locomotion; but these inventions were never carried into effect. The first locomotive steam-engine actually made and set to work was the invention of Cugnot, a French engineer, who exhibited a model of it in 1763. It was tried, with imperfect success in 1769, and an improved engine of the same kind was tried with somewhat better results in 1770; but its use was abandoned on the ground of danger. William Murdock, Watt's assistant, made a small working model of a high-pressure locomotive engine in 1784. Its performance was so good as to show that it would probably have succeeded on the large scale. The first practically successful locomotive engine was that of Trevithick and Vivian, which was patented in 1802. It was constructed and tried on common roads in the same year, and on a railway, near Merthyr Tydvil, in 1804. On the latter occasion it drew a net load of ten tons at five miles an hour. After various inventors had long exerted their ingenuity to little purpose in devising means of giving the locomotive engine a firm hold of the track by means of rackwork rails, and toothed driving-wheels, legs and feet, warping chains, and other contrivances—William Hedley, the viewer of Wylam colliery, made in 1813 the important discovery that no such aids were required, the adhesion between smooth wheels and smooth rails being sufficient; and in accordance with
