He finally found it necessary to declare that he was not a member of the Church of England, but of the Presbyterian church of Scotland, a reason which in that day was conclusive.

In 1816, he was in his eighty-first year, and no difficulty seems then to have been found for excusing him, for it seems the assumption of the duties was compulsory. It was "the voice of age resistless in its feebleness."

The day had come when Watt awakened to one of the saddest of all truths, that his friends were one by one rapidly passing away, the circle ever narrowing, the few whose places never could be filled becoming fewer, he in the centre left more and more alone. Nothing grieved Watt so much as this. In 1794 his partner, Roebuck, fell; in 1799, his inseparable friend, and supporter in his hour of need, Dr. Black, and also Withering of the Lunar Society; and in 1802 Darwin "of the silver song," one of his earliest English friends. In 1804, his brilliant son Gregory died, a terrible shock. In 1805, his first Glasgow College intimate, Robison; Dr. Beddoes in 1808; Boulton, his partner, in 1809; Dr. Wilson in 1811; DeLuc in 1817. Many other friends of less distinction fell in these years who were not less dear to him. He says, "by one friend's withdrawing after another," he felt himself "in danger of standing alone among strangers, the son of later times."

He writes to Boulton on November 23, 1802:

We cannot help feeling, with deep regret, the circle of our old friends gradually diminishing, while our ability to increase it by new ones is equally diminished; but perhaps it is a wise dispensation of Providence so to diminish our enjoyments in this world, that when our turn comes we may leave it without regret.

He writes to another correspondent, July 12, 1810:

I, in particular, have reason to thank God that he has preserved me so well as I am, to so late a period, while the greater part of my contemporaries, healthier and younger men, have passed "the bourne from which no traveller returns." It is, however, a painful contemplation to see so many who were dear to us pass away before us; and our consolation should be, that as Providence has been pleased to prolong our life, we should render ourselves as useful to society as we can while we live.

And again, when seventy-six years of age, January, 1812, he writes:

On these subjects I can offer no other consolations than what are derived from religion: they have only gone before us a little while, in that path we all must tread, and we should be thankful they were spared so long to their friends and the world.

Sir Walter Scott declares:

That is the worst part of life when its earlier path is trod. If my limbs get stiff, my walks are made shorter, and my rides slower; if my eyes fail me, I can use glasses and a large print: if I get a little deaf, I comfort myself that except in a few instances I shall be no great loser by missing one full half of what is spoken: but I feel the loneliness of age when my companions and friends are taken from me.

All his life until retiring from business, Watt's care was to obtain sufficient for the support of himself and family upon the most modest scale. He had no surplus to devote to ends beyond self, but as soon as he retired with a small competence it was different, and we accordingly find him promptly beginning to apply some portion of his still small revenue to philanthropical ends. Naturally, his thoughts reverted first to his native town and the university to which he owed so much.

In 1808 he founded the Watt Prize in Glasgow University, saying:

Entertaining a due sense of the many favours conferred upon me by the University of Glasgow, I wish to leave them some memorial of my gratitude, and, at the same time, to excite a spirit of inquiry and exertion among the students of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry attending the College; which appears to me the more useful, as the very existence of Britain, as a nation, seems to me, in great measure, to depend upon her exertions in science and in the arts.

The University conferred the degree of LL.D. upon him in 1774, and its great engineering laboratory bears his name.

In 1816, he made a donation to the town of Greenock for scientific books, stating it to be his intention

to form the beginning of a scientific library for the instruction of the youth of Greenock, in the hope of prompting others to add to it, and of rendering his townsmen as eminent for their knowledge as they are for the spirit of enterprise.

This has grown to be a library containing 15,000 volumes, and is a valuable adjunct of the Watt Institution, founded by his son in memory of his father, which is to-day the educational centre of Greenock. Its entrance is adorned by a remarkably fine statue of Watt, funds for which were raised by public subscription.

Many societies honored the great inventor. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Society of London, Member of the Batavian Society, correspondent of the French Academy of Sciences, and was one of the eight Foreign Associates of the French Academy of Sciences.

Watt's almost morbid dislike for publicity leaves many well-known acts of kindness and charity hidden from all save the recipients. Muirhead assures us that such gifts as we can well believe were not wanting. Watt's character as a kindly neighbor always stood high. He was one of those "who will not receive a reward for that for which God accounts Himself a debtor—persons that dare trust God with their charity, and without a witness."

In the autumn of 1819 an illness of no great apparent severity caused some little anxiety to Watt's family, and was soon recognised by himself as the messenger sent to apprise him of his end. This summons he met with the calm and tranquil mind, that, looking backward, could have found little of serious nature to repent, and looking forward, found nothing to fear. "He often expressed his gratitude to the Giver of All Good who had so signally prospered the work of his hands and blessed him with length of days and riches and honour." On August 19, 1819, aged 83, in his own home at Heathfield, he tranquilly breathed his last, deeply mourned by all who were privileged to know him. In the parish churchyard, alongside of Boulton, he was most appropriately laid to rest. Thus the two strong men, lifelong friends and partners, who had never had a serious difference, "lovely and pleasant in their lives, in their death were not divided."

It may be doubted whether there be on record so charming a business connection as that of Boulton and Watt; in their own increasingly close union for twenty-five years, and, at its expiration, in the renewal of that union in their sons under the same title; in their sons' close union as friends without friction as in the first generation; in the wonderful progress of the world resulting from their works; in their lying down side by side in death upon the bosom of Mother Earth in the quiet churchyard, as they had stood side by side in the battle of life; and in the faithful servant Murdoch joining them at the last, as he had joined them in his prime. In the sweet and precious influences which emanate from all this, may we not gratefully make acknowledgment that in contemplation thereof we are lifted into a higher atmosphere, refreshed, encouraged, and bettered by the true story of men like ourselves, whom if we can never hope to equal, we may at least try in part to imitate.

A meeting was called in London to take steps for a monument to Watt to be placed in Westminster Abbey. The prime minister presided and announced a subscription of five hundred pounds sterling from His Majesty. It may truly be said that

A meeting more distinguished by rank, station and talent, was never before assembled to do honour to genius, and to modest and retiring worth; and a more spontaneous, noble, and discriminating testimony was never borne to the virtues, talents, and public services of any individual, in any age or country.

The result was the colossal statue by Chantrey which bears the following inscription, pronounced to be beyond comparison "the finest lapidary inscription in the English language." It is from the pen of Lord Brougham:

NOT TO PERPETUATE A NAME WHICH MUST ENDURE WHILE THE PEACEFUL ARTS FLOURISH BUT TO SHEW THAT MANKIND HAVE LEARNT TO HONOUR THOSE WHO BEST DESERVE THEIR GRATITUDE THE KING HIS MINISTERS, AND MANY OF THE NOBLES AND COMMONERS OF THE REALM RAISED THIS MONUMENT TO JAMES WATT WHO DIRECTING THE FORCE OF AN ORIGINAL GENIUS EARLY EXERCISED IN PHILOSOPHIC RESEARCH TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE STEAM-ENGINE ENLARGED THE RESOURCES OF HIS COUNTRY INCREASED THE POWER OF MAN AND ROSE TO AN EMINENT PLACE AMONG THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS FOLLOWERS OF SCIENCE AND THE REAL BENEFACTORS OF THE WORLD BORN AT GREENOCK MDCCXXXVI DIED AT HEATHFIELD IN STAFFORDSHIRE MDCCCXIX



CHAPTER X

WATT, THE INVENTOR AND DISCOVERER

In the foregoing pages an effort has been made to follow and describe Watt's work in detail as it was performed, but we believe our readers will thank us for presenting the opinions of a few of the highest scientific and legal authorities upon what Watt really did. Lord Brougham has this to say of Watt:

One of the most astonishing circumstances in this truly great man was the versatility of his talents. His accomplishments were so various, the powers of his mind were so vast, and yet of such universal application, that it was hard to say whether we should most admire the extraordinary grasp of his understanding, or the accuracy of nice research with which he could bring it to bear upon the most minute objects of investigation. I forget of whom it was said, that his mind resembled the trunk of an elephant, which can pick up straws and tear up trees by the roots. Mr. Watt in some sort resembled the greatest and most celebrated of his own inventions; of which we are at a loss whether most to wonder at the power of grappling with the mightiest objects, or of handling the most minute; so that while nothing seems too large for its grasp, nothing seems too small for the delicacy of its touch; which can cleave rocks and pour forth rivers from the bowels of the earth, and with perfect exactness, though not with greater ease, fashion the head of a pin, or strike the impress of some curious die. Now those who knew Mr. Watt, had to contemplate a man whose genius could create such an engine, and indulge in the most abstruse speculations of philosophy, and could at once pass from the most sublime researches of geology and physical astronomy, the formation of our globe, and the structure of the universe, to the manufacture of a needle or a nail; who could discuss in the same conversation, and with equal accuracy, if not with the same consummate skill, the most forbidding details of art, and the elegances of classical literature; the most abstruse branches of science, and the niceties of verbal criticism.

There was one quality in Mr. Watt which most honorably distinguished him from too many inventors, and was worthy of all imitation; he was not only entirely free from jealousy, but he exercised a careful and scrupulous self-denial, and was anxious not to appear, even by accident, as appropriating to himself that which he thought belonged in part to others. I have heard him refuse the honor universally ascribed to him, of being inventor of the steam-engine, and call himself simply its improver; though, in my mind, to doubt his right to that honor would be as inaccurate as to question Sir Isaac Newton's claim to his greatest discoveries, because Descartes in mathematics, and Galileo in astronomy and mechanics, had preceded him; or to deny the merits of his illustrious successor, because galvanism was not his discovery, though before his time it had remained as useless to science as the instrument called a steam-engine was to the arts before Mr. Watt. The only jealousy I have known him betray was with respect to others, in the nice adjustment he was fond of giving to the claims of inventors. Justly prizing scientific discovery above all other possessions, he deemed the title to it so sacred, that you might hear him arguing by the hour to settle disputed rights; and if you ever perceived his temper ruffled, it was when one man's invention was claimed by, or given to, another; or when a clumsy adulation pressed upon himself that which he knew to be not his own.

Sir Humphrey Davy says:

I consider it as a duty incumbent on me to endeavor to set forth his peculiar and exalted merits, which live in the recollection of his contemporaries and will transmit his name with immortal glory to posterity. Those who consider James Watt only as a great practical mechanic form a very erroneous idea of his character; he was equally distinguished as a natural philosopher and a chemist, and his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that peculiar characteristic of genius, the union of them for practical application. The steam engine before his time was a rude machine, the result of simple experiments on the compression of the atmosphere, and the condensation of steam. Mr. Watt's improvements were not produced by accidental circumstances or by a single ingenious thought; they were founded on delicate and refined experiments, connected with the discoveries of Dr. Black. He had to investigate the cause of the cold produced by evaporation, of the heat occasioned by the condensation of steam—to determine the source of the air appearing when water was acted upon by an exhausting power; the ratio of the volume of steam to its generating water, and the law by which the elasticity of steam increased with the temperature; labor, time, numerous and difficult experiments, were required for the ultimate result; and when his principle was obtained, the application of it to produce the movement of machinery demanded a new species of intellectual and experimental labor.

The Archimedes of the ancient world by his mechanical inventions arrested the course of the Romans, and stayed for a time the downfall of his country. How much more has our modern Archimedes done? He has permanently elevated the strength and wealth of his great empire: and, during the last long war, his inventions; and their application were amongst the great means which enabled Britain to display power and resources so infinitely above what might have been expected from the numerical strength of her population. Archimedes valued principally abstract science; James Watt, on the contrary, brought every principle to some practical use; and, as it were, made science descend from heaven to earth. The great inventions of the Syracusan died with him—those of our philosopher live, and their utility and importance are daily more felt; they are among the grand results which place civilised above savage man—which secure the triumph of intellect, and exalt genius and moral force over mere brutal strength, courage and numbers.

Sir James Mackintosh says:

It may be presumptuous in me to add anything in my own words to such just and exalted praise. Let me rather borrow the language in which the great father of modern philosophy, Lord Bacon himself, has spoken of inventors in the arts of life. In a beautiful, though not very generally read fragment of his, called the New Atlantis, a voyage to an imaginary island, he has imagined a university, or rather royal society, under the name of Solomon's House, or the College of the Six Days' Works; and among the various buildings appropriated to this institution, he describes a gallery destined to contain the statues of inventors. He does not disdain to place in it not only the inventor of one of the greatest instruments of science, but the discoverer of the use of the silkworm, and of other still more humble contrivances for the comfort of man. What place would Lord Bacon have assigned in such a gallery to the statue of Mr. Watt? Is it too much to say, that, considering the magnitude of the discoveries, the genius and science necessary to make them, and the benefits arising from them to the world, that statue must have been placed at the head of those of all inventors in all ages and nations. In another part of his writings the same great man illustrates the dignity of useful inventions by one of those happy allusions to the beautiful mythology of the ancients, which he often employs to illuminate as well as to decorate reason. "The dignity," says he, "of this end of endowment of man's life with new commodity appeareth, by the estimation that antiquity made of such as guided thereunto; for whereas founders of states, lawgivers, extirpators of tyrants, fathers of the people, were honored but with the titles of demigods, inventors were ever consecrated amongst the gods themselves."

The Earl of Aberdeen says:

It would ill become me to attempt to add to the eulogy which you have already heard on the distinguished individual whose genius and talents we have met this day to acknowledge. That eulogy has been pronounced by those whose praises are well calculated to confer honor, even upon him whose name does honor to his country. I feel in common with them, although I can but ill express that intense admiration which the bare recollection of those discoveries must excite, which have rendered us familiar with a power before nearly unknown, and which have taught us to wield, almost at will, perhaps the mightiest instrument ever intrusted to the hands of man. I feel, too, that in erecting a monument to his memory, placed, as it may be, among the memorials of kings, and heroes, and statesmen, and philosophers, that it will be then in its proper place; and most in its proper place, if in the midst of those who have been most distinguished by their usefulness to mankind, and by the spotless integrity of their lives.

Lord Jeffrey says:

This name fortunately needs no commemoration of ours; for he that bore it survived to see it crowned with undisputed and unenvied honors; and many generations will probably pass away, before it shall have gathered "all its fame." We have said that Mr. Watt was the great improver of the steam engine; but, in truth, as to all that is admirable in its structure, or vast in its utility, he should rather be described as its inventor. It was by his inventions that its action was so regulated, as to make it capable of being applied to the finest and most delicate manufactures, and its power so increased, as to set weight and solidity at defiance. By his admirable contrivance, it has become a thing stupendous alike for its force and its flexibility, for the prodigious power which it can exert, and the ease, and precision, and ductility, with which it can be varied, distributed, and applied. The trunk of an elephant, that can pick up a pin or rend an oak, is as nothing to it. It can engrave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate metal before it; draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer, and lift a ship of war like a bauble in the air. It can embroider muslin and forge anchors, cut steel into ribbons, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and waves.

It would be difficult to estimate the value of the benefits which these inventions have conferred upon this country. There is no branch of industry that has not been indebted to them; and, in all the most material, they have not only widened most magnificently the field of its exertions, but multiplied a thousandfold the amount of its productions. It is our improved steam engine that has fought the battles of Europe, and exalted and sustained, through the late tremendous contest, the political greatness of our land. It is the same great power which now enables us to pay the interest of our debt, and to maintain the arduous struggle in which we are still engaged (1819), with the skill and capital of countries less oppressed with taxation. But these are poor and narrow views of its importance. It has increased indefinitely the mass of human comforts and enjoyments, and rendered cheap and accessible, all over the world, the materials of wealth and prosperity. It has armed the feeble hand of man, in short, with a power to which no limits can be assigned; completed the dominion of mind over the most refractory qualities of matter; and laid a sure foundation for all those future miracles of mechanical power which are to aid and reward the labors of after generations. It is to the genius of one man, too, that all this is mainly owing; and certainly no man ever bestowed such a gift on his kind. The blessing is not only universal, but unbounded; and the fabled inventors of the plough and the loom, who were deified by the erring gratitude of their rude contemporaries, conferred less important benefits on mankind than the inventor of our present steam engine.

This will be the fame of Watt with future generations; and it is sufficient for his race and his country. But to those to whom he more immediately belonged, who lived in his society and enjoyed his conversation, it is not, perhaps, the character in which he will be most frequently recalled—most deeply lamented—or even most highly admired.

We shall end by quoting the greatest living authority, Lord Kelvin, now Lord Chancellor of Glasgow University, which Watt and he have done so much to render famous:

Precisely that single-acting, high-pressure, syringe-engine, made and experimented on by James Watt one hundred and forty years ago in his Glasgow College workshop, now in 1901, with the addition of a surface-condenser cooled by air to receive the waste steam, and a pump to return the water thence to the boiler, constitutes the common-road motor, which, in the opinion of many good judges, is the most successful of all the different motors which have been made and tried within the last few years. Without a condenser, Watt's high-pressure, single-acting engine of 1761, only needs the cylinder-cover with piston-rod passing steam-tight through it (as introduced by Watt himself in subsequent developments), and the valves proper for admitting steam on both sides of the piston and for working expansively, to make it the very engine, which, during the whole of the past century, has done practically all the steam work of the world, and is doing it still, except on the sea or lakes or rivers, where there is plenty of condensing water. Even the double and triple and quadruple expansion engines, by which the highest modern economy for power and steam engines has been obtained, are splendid mechanical developments of the principle of expansion, discovered and published by Watt, and used, though to a comparatively limited extent, in his own engines.

* * * * *

Thus during the five years from 1761-66 Watt had worked out all the principles and invented all that was essential in the details for realising them in the most perfect steam engines of the present day.

So passes Watt from view as the discoverer and inventor of the "most powerful instrument in the hands of man to alter the face of the physical world." He takes his place "at the head of all inventors of all ages and all nations."



CHAPTER XI

WATT, THE MAN

Of Watt, the genius, possessed of abilities far beyond those of other men, a scientist and philosopher, a mechanician and a craftsman, one who gravitated without effort to the top of every society, and who, even when a young workman, made his workshop the meeting-place of the leaders of Glasgow University for the interchange of views upon the highest and most abstruse subjects—with all this we have already dealt, but it is only part, and not the nobler part. He excelled all his fellows in knowledge, but there is much beyond mere knowledge in man. Strip Watt of all those commanding talents that brought him primacy without effort, for no man ever avoided precedence more persistently than he, and the question still remains: what manner of man was he, as man? Surely our readers would esteem the task but half done that revealed only what was unusual in Watt's head. What of his heart? is naturally asked. We hasten to record that in the domain of the personal graces and virtues, we have evidence of his excellence as copious and assured as for his pre-eminence in invention and discovery.

We cite the testimony of those who knew him best. It is seldom that a great man is so fortunate in his eulogists. The picture drawn of him by his friend, Lord Jeffrey, must rank as one of the finest ever produced, as portrait and tribute combined. That it is a discriminating statement, altho so eulogistic, may well be accepted, since numerous contributory proofs are given by others of Watt's personal characteristics. Says Lord Jeffrey:

Independently of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr. Watt was an extraordinary, and in many respects a wonderful man. Perhaps no individual in his age possessed so much and such varied and exact information—had read so much, or remembered what he had read so accurately and well. He had infinite quickness of apprehension, a prodigious memory, and a certain rectifying and methodising power of understanding, which extracted something precious out of all that was presented to it. His stores of miscellaneous knowledge were immense, and yet less astonishing than the command he had at all times over them. It seemed as if every subject that was casually started in conversation with him, had been that which he had been last occupied in studying and exhausting; such was the copiousness, the precision, and the admirable clearness of the information which he poured out upon it without effort or hesitation. Nor was this promptitude and compass of knowledge confined in any degree to the studies connected with his ordinary pursuits. That he should have been minutely and extensively skilled in chemistry and the arts, and in most of the branches of physical science, might perhaps have been conjectured; but it could not have been inferred from his usual occupations, and probably is not generally known, that he was curiously learned in many branches of antiquity, metaphysics, medicine, and etymology, and perfectly at home in all the details of architecture, music and law. He was well acquainted, too, with most of the modern languages, and familiar with their most recent literature. Nor was it at all extraordinary to hear the great mechanician and engineer detailing and expounding, for hours together, the metaphysical theories of the German logicians, or criticising the measures or the matter of the German poetry.

His astonishing memory was aided, no doubt, in a great measure, by a still higher and rarer faculty—by his power of digesting and arranging in its proper place all the information he received, and of casting aside and rejecting, as it were instinctively, whatever was worthless or immaterial. Every conception that was suggested to his mind seemed instantly to take its place among its other rich furniture, and to be condensed into the smallest and most convenient form. He never appeared, therefore, to be at all encumbered or perplexed with the verbiage of the dull books he perused, or the idle talk to which he listened; but to have at once extracted, by a kind of intellectual alchemy, all that was worthy of attention, and to have reduced it, for his own use, to its true value and to its simplest form. And thus it often happened that a great deal more was learned from his brief and vigorous account of the theories and arguments of tedious writers, than an ordinary student could ever have derived from the most painful study of the originals, and that errors and absurdities became manifest from the mere clearness and plainness of his statement of them, which might have deluded and perplexed most of his hearers without that invaluable assistance.

It is needless to say, that, with those vast resources, his conversation was at all times rich and instructive in no ordinary degree; but it was, if possible, still more pleasing than wise, and had all the charms of familiarity, with all the substantial treasures of knowledge. No man could be more social in his spirit, less assuming or fastidious in his manners, or more kind and indulgent toward all who approached him. He rather liked to talk, at least in his latter years, but though he took a considerable share of the conversation, he rarely suggested the topics on which it was to turn, but readily and quietly took up whatever was presented by those around him, and astonished the idle and barren propounders of an ordinary theme, by the treasures which he drew from the mine they had inconsciously opened. He generally seemed, indeed, to have no choice or predilection for one subject of discourse rather than another; but allowed his mind, like a great cyclopaedia, to be opened at any letter his associates might choose to turn up, and only endeavour to select, from his inexhaustible stores, what might be best adapted to the taste of his present hearers. As to their capacity he gave himself no trouble; and, indeed, such was his singular talent for making all things plain, clear, and intelligible, that scarcely any one could be aware of such a deficiency in his presence. His talk, too, though overflowing with information, had no resemblance to lecturing or solemn discoursing, but, on the contrary, was full of colloquial spirit and pleasantry. He had a certain quiet and grave humour, which ran through most of his conversation, and a vein of temperate jocularity, which gave infinite zest and effect to the condensed and inexhaustible information which formed its main staple and characteristic. There was a little air of affected testiness, and a tone of pretended rebuke and contradiction, with which he used to address his younger friends, that was always felt by them as an endearing mark of his kindness and familiarity, and prized accordingly, far beyond all the solemn compliments that ever proceeded from the lips of authority. His voice was deep and powerful, although he commonly spoke in a low and somewhat monotonous tone, which harmonised admirably with the weight and brevity of his observations, and set off to the greatest advantage the pleasant anecdotes, which he delivered with the same grave brow, and the same calm smile playing soberly on his lips. There was nothing of effort indeed, or impatience, any more than pride or levity, in his demeanour; and there was a finer expression of reposing strength, and mild self-possession in his manner, than we ever recollect to have met with in any other person. He had in his character the utmost abhorrence for all sorts of forwardness, parade and pretensions; and, indeed, never failed to put all such impostures out of countenance, by the manly plainness and honest intrepidity of his language and deportment.

In his temper and dispositions he was not only kind and affectionate, but generous, and considerate of the feelings of all around him; and gave the most liberal assistance and encouragement to all young persons who showed any indications of talent, or applied to him for patronage or advice. His health, which was delicate from his youth upwards, seemed to become firmer as he advanced in years; and he preserved, up almost to the last moment of his existence, not only the full command of his extraordinary intellect, but all the alacrity of spirit, and the social gaiety, which had illumined his happiest days. His friends in this part of the country never saw him more full of intellectual vigour and colloquial animation, never more delightful or more instructive, than in his last visit to Scotland in the autumn of 1817. Indeed, it was after that time that he applied himself, with all the ardour of early life, to the invention of a machine for mechanically copying all sorts of sculpture and statuary; and distributed among his friends some of its earliest performances, as the productions of a young artist just entering on his eighty-third year.

* * * * *

All men of learning and science were his cordial friends; and such was the influence of his mild character and perfect fairness and liberality, even upon the pretenders to these accomplishments, that he lived to disarm even envy itself, and died, we verily believe, without a single enemy.

Professor Robison, the most intimate friend of his youth, records that:

When to the superiority of knowledge in his own line, which every man confessed, there was joined the naive simplicity and candour of his character, it is no wonder that the attachment of his acquaintances was so strong. I have seen something of the world and I am obliged to say that I never saw such another instance of general and cordial attachment to a person whom all acknowledged to be their superior. But this superiority was concealed under the most amiable candour, and liberal allowance of merit to every man. Mr. Watt was the first to ascribe to the ingenuity of a friend things which were very often nothing but his own surmises followed out and embodied by another. I am well entitled to say this, and have often experienced it in my own case.

This potent commander of the elements, this abridger of time and space, this magician, whose cloudy machinery has produced a change in the world, the effects of which, extraordinary as they are, are perhaps only now beginning to be felt—was not only the most profound man of science, the most successful combiner of powers, and combiner of numbers, as adapted to practical purposes—was not only one of the most generally well-informed, but one of the best and kindest of human beings. There he stood, surrounded by the little band of northern literati, men not less tenacious, generally speaking, of their own opinions, than the national regiments are supposed to be jealous of the high character they have won upon service. Methinks I yet see and hear what I shall never see or hear again. The alert, kind, benevolent old man had his attention alive to every one's question, his information at every one's command. His talents and fancy overflowed on every subject. One gentleman was a deep philologist, he talked with him on the origin of the alphabet as if he had been coeval with Cadmus; another, a celebrated critic, you would have said the old man had studied political economy and belles lettres all his life; of science it is unnecessary to speak, it was his own distinguished walk.

Lord Brougham says:

We have been considering this eminent person as yet only in his public capacity, as a benefactor of mankind by his fertile genius and indomitable perseverance; and the best portraiture of his intellectual character was to be found in the description of his attainments. It is, however, proper to survey him also in private life. He was unexceptionable in all its relations; and as his activity was unmeasured, and his taste anything rather than fastidious, he both was master of every variety of knowledge, and was tolerant of discussion on subjects of very subordinate importance compared with those on which he most excelled. Not only all the sciences from the mathematics and astronomy, down to botany, received his diligent attention, but he was tolerably read in the lighter kinds of literature, delighting in poetry and other works of fiction, full of the stores of ancient literature, and readily giving himself up to the critical disquisitions of commentators, and to discussion on the fancies of etymology. His manners were most attractive from their perfect nature and simplicity. His conversation was rich in the measure which such stores and such easy taste might lead us to expect, and it astonished all listeners with its admirable precision, with the extraordinary memory it displayed, with the distinctness it seemed to have, as if his mind had separate niches for keeping each particular, and with its complete rejection of all worthless and superfluous matter, as if the same mind had some fine machine for acting like a fan, casting off the chaff and the husk. But it had besides a peculiar charm from the pleasure he took in conveying information where he was peculiarly able to give it, and in joining with entire candor whatever discussion happened to arise. Even upon matters on which he was entitled to pronounce with absolute authority, he never laid down the law, but spoke like any other partaker of the conversation. I had the happiness of knowing Mr. Watt for many years, in the intercourse of private life; and I will take upon me to bear a testimony, in which all who had that gratification I am sure will join, that they who only knew his public merit, prodigious as that was, knew but half his worth. Those who were admitted to his society will readily allow that anything more pure, more candid, more simple, more scrupulously loving of justice, than the whole habits of his life and conversation proved him to be, was never known in society.

The descriptions given by Lords Brougham, Jeffrey, the genial Sir Walter, and others, of Watt's universality of knowledge and his charm in discourse recall Canterbury's exordium:

Hear him but reason in divinity And, all-admiring, with an inward wish consumed, You would desire the king were made a prelate; Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, You would say—it hath been all in all his study: List his discourse of war, and you shall hear A fearful battle rendered you in music. Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks, The air, a chartered libertine, is still, And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences.

If Watt fell somewhat short of this, so no doubt did the king so greatly extolled, and much more so, probably, than the versatile Watt.

Dr. Black, the discoverer of latent heat, upon his death-bed, hears that the Watt patent has been sustained, and is for the time restored again to interest in life. He whispers that he "could not help rejoicing at anything that benefited Jamie Watt."

The Earl of Liverpool, prime minister, stated that Watt was remarkable for

the simplicity of his character, the modesty of his nature, the absence of anything like presumption and ostentation, the unwillingness to obtrude himself, not only upon the great and powerful, but even on those of the scientific world to which he belonged. A more excellent and amiable man in all the relations of life I believe never existed.

There can be no question that we have for our example, in the man Watt, a nature cast in the finest mold, seemingly composed of every creature's best. Transcendent as were his abilities as inventor and discoverer, we are persuaded that our readers will feel that his qualities as a man in all the relations of life were not less so, nor less worthy of record. His supreme abilities we can neither acquire nor emulate. These are individual and ended with him. But his virtues and charms as our fellow-man still shine steadily upon our paths and will shine upon those of our successors for ages to come, we trust not without leading us and them to tread some part of the way toward the acquisition of such qualities as enabled the friend of James Watt to declare his belief that "a more excellent and amiable man in all the relations of life never existed." A nobler tribute was never paid by man to man, yet was it not undeserved.

So passes Jamie Watt, the man, from view—a man who attracted, delighted, impressed, instructed and made lifelong friends of his fellows, to a degree unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled.

"His life was gentle, and the elements So mixed in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, 'This was a man.'"

THE END