I am enjoying Doctor Thorne more than Barchester Towers or The Warden. It seems to operate a bit more in the area of books like Bleak House, North and South, and Middlemarch. It was a time when self-made men made reputations for themselves by their feats of engineering; thus alarming their betters. I read a non-fiction book called Iron Men about some of the greatest engineers from the Industrial Revolution. Not all of them, but a bigger proportion of them were men with little education, who just had the drive and the raw ability to succeed. They did not go to university. They did not know any Latin. Some were barely literate. Roger Scratcherd sounded like one of those men, only more in the civil engineering than metal bashing line. When the book described Roger Scracherd's being asked by parliament to taken on difficult projects, I was reminded of George Stephenson, who designed the first passenger train. He was barely literate.