Plums, however, there are, though not perhaps in full proportion to the frosted coating, or of just the kind that are best agglutinated by the biographical dough.  Of anecdote or gossip, glimpses of “life and manners” or personal details, there is nothing.  Nor can we justly take exception to this.  On the contrary, it gives a unity to the subject by excluding whatever had no relation to the enterprises with which Mr. Brassey’s name is connected, and which absorbed his time and thoughts to a degree that can have left him but little opportunity for intercourse with mankind except in a business capacity.  It is these enterprises—­not in their entirety or with reference to the objects with which they were designed, but as evidences and illustrations of the working force, mental and physical, demanded for their execution—­that form the real subject of the book, the matter of which has been chiefly furnished by the various agents entrusted with the immediate supervision of the labor and outlay of the capital employed.  The details thus brought together afford perhaps a more vivid idea of the industrial energy and activity of the nineteenth century, and of the resources they have called into play, than could have been obtained from a survey of any other field in which the like qualities have been displayed.  It was chiefly with railway enterprises, and this almost from their inception, and to an extent far beyond the rivalry of any other constructor, that Mr. Brassey was engaged; and the railway system, not only by its own immense demands on capital, labor and inventive skill, but still more by the stimulus and aid it has given to industrial enterprises of every kind, must be regarded as the main lever of a material progress that has outstripped the conceptions and possibilities of all previous ages.  With the development of a system so different in its nature from the great undertakings of any former period came the need of the contractor, entrusted with the direction and laden with the full responsibility of works which no government “boards” or similar machinery would have been competent to carry through under the conditions imposed by the novel circumstances of the movement and the exacting spirit by which it was impelled.  To attain the foremost place in the new career thus created demanded, obviously, no ordinary powers—­special knowledge of various kinds, equal facility in mastering details and grasping a general plan, tact in the choice and management of subordinates, courage and promptness in encountering unforeseen obstacles and disasters, and skill and clearheadedness in the general control of enormous and intricate financial interests.  To these qualities must be added in the present case what is not so invariably associated with the names of succesful contractors—­a faithfulness and integrity which merited and received the fullest confidence.  Whether working at a gain or at a loss, Mr. Brassey was ever resolute to execute his engagements to the letter, and he declined to make