CHAPTER II.

JOHN AND JAMES WATT OF GREENOCK-SCENERY OF THE FRITH OF CLYDE-RAPID PROGRESS IN THE NAVIGATION OF THAT RIVER-LIFE AND PURSUITS OF JAMES WATT OF GREENOCK, FATHER OF THE GREAT ENGINEER-AGNES MUIRHEID, HIS WIFE-MUIRHEADS OF LACHOP-FLODDEN FIELD-CHARACTER AND DEATH OF AGNES MUIRHEAD OR WATT-HER BROTHER, JOHN MUIRHEID.

Two sons of Thomas Watt, John and James, grew up to man's estate, surviving their parents; and both of them appear to have been diligently trained by their father in his own pursuits; in which John, the elder of the two, was for some time able to be of service in assisting his kind instructor. In 1712, John Watt, being then twenty-five years of age, was appointed clerk to the barony of Cartsburn, and burgh and barony of Crawfordsdyke, of which his father was for many years the baillie. But he soon quitted Greenock for Glasgow, to seek a wider field for the exercise of his profession, and there, as a surveyor, he obtained considerable practice, dying unmarried at the age of fifty, in 1737. He left behind him a Survey of the course and Frith of the river Clyde, from above Rutherglen and Dalbeth on the East, to Loch Ryan, Portincross, and the coast of Ireland on the South, and the islands of Islay, Colonsay, and part of Mull, on the West. This Survey was made in 1734; it was engraved in 1759, and published in 1759-'60, by the united cares of his brother James, and of his two nephews, John and James; of whom the one perished at sea two years afterwards, on a voyage to America in one of his father's ships, at the age of twenty-four, and the other was the great engineer.

"The Survey," writes the latter in 1794, "as far as the

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Point of Toward, was done by my uncle before I was born; the remainder was added by my father and my brother, but is not over accurate." Several alterations were made on the map, by the engineer's own hand, before it was engraved, particularly on that portion of it comprehending the islands of Mull, Islay, &c., which occupies a separate division of the map, and is entitled, 'Entry to the River and Firth of Clyde and adjacent islands, according to the best authorities."

James, the younger son of Thomas Watt, was born on the 28th of January, 1699, and it is said, after having served an apprenticeship to a builder and shipwright in Crawfordsdyke, to have settled in Greenock about the time of his marriage, in 1728 or 1729, when, consequently, he must have been on the verge of thirty years of age. If not so deeply versed in the theories of abstract science as either his father or his brother,-or, we need scarcely add, as his illustrious son, he seems to have been not less energetic in the practice of those useful occupations to which he devoted his life. They were, in his case, a somewhat multifarious compound of commerce and of the more ordinary handicraft arts required for the purposes of commercial and seafaring men; he was a shipwright; a ship-chandler, supplying vessels with nautical apparatus, stores and instruments; a builder, and a merchant. For upwards of twenty years he was a member of the Town Council of Greenock, and, during great part of that time, its Treasurer; a magistrate, and always a zealous and enlightened promoter of the improvements of the town of which he was an inhabitant.

The lady whom James Watt of Greenock married was Agnes Muirheid, or Muirhead (for the name was indifferently spelt in either way), “a fine-looking woman, with pleasing, graceful manners, a cultivated mind, an excellent understanding, and an equal, cheerful temper." She was descended from a branch of a family of some note in the early history of Scotland, "settled in the shire of Clidesdale time immemorial, and certainly before the reign of David the first of Scotland, anno 1122." The ancient

family of the Muirheads of Lachop who were chiefs of their clan, gave to the see of Glasgow, in 1454 (before its erection into an archbishopric), its pious and learned Bishop Dr. Andrew Muirhead, who in 1468 was sent as Ambassador to Copenhagen, to settle the marriage of Margaret "the Maid of Norway" to King James III. ; and, in 1494, the same family supplied the realm of Scotland with a Lord Clerk Register, Judge, and Secretary of State, in the person of Dr. Richard Muirhead, Dean of Glasgow. But the most glorious, though disastrous fate of the Muirheads, clan and chieftain alike, befel them on the fatal day of Flodden field, where they occupied the post of honour and of danger as the body-guard of the King. There, when, as the old song has it, "The English, for ance, by guile wan the day," they sealed their loyal devotion to their monarch with their blood; and Sir Walter Scott, in his "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," has preserved the record of their fatal feat of arms in the old ballad of "THE LAIRD OF MUIRHEAD."

Agnes Muirheid lived in happy wedlock with James Watt of Greenock for a quarter of a century, and died in 1755, aged 52. Her portrait, which is still in existence, well executed in oil colors, seems to justify the encomiums passed by those who knew her, on the great comeliness of her countenance, and on the quiet good sense and serene composure of her mind. In Mr. Williamson's volume her likeness is thus drawn, and all that we have ever heard concerning her confirms the truth of the portraiture: “A gentlewoman of good understanding and superior endowments, whose excellent management in household affairs would seem to have contributed much to the order of her establishment, as well as the every-day happiness of a cheerful home. She is described as having been a person above common in many respects, of a fine womanly presence, ladylike in appearance, affecting-according to our traditions-in domestic arrangements what it would seem was considered, for the time, rather a superior style of living. Our venerable informant described James Watt's mother-in her eloquent and expressive Doric-as 'a braw,

A

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Braw woman-none now to be seen like her."" It is said that her death was preceded by a singular dream, in which "she heard a voice requiring her to prepare for appearing within three days before the. judgment-seat of CHRIST;" and that within three days thereafter she suddenly died.*

John Muirheid, the brother of Mrs. Watt, and James Watt, her husband, were united in many mercantile adventures, and although Mr. Watt, in the latter part of his life, experienced heavy commercial losses, which swept away a great portion of the respectable fortune which his assiduous industry had realized; we believe those to have arisen from enterprises with which no member of his brother-in-law's family was in anywise associated.

* Memorials of Watt, p. 154.

CHAPTER III.

CHILDREN OF JAMES WATT OF GREENOCK, AND AGNES MUIRHEID-BIRTH OF JAMES WATT-JOHN WATT, HIS YOUNGER BROTHER-JAMES WATT'S CHILDHOOD-HIS HOME, EDUCATION, AND FEEBLE HEALTH-MRS. CAMPBELL'S MEMORANDA OF HIS EARLY YEARS-HIS POWERS OF IMAGINATION-HIS FIRST OBSERVATION OF THE CONDENSATION OF STEAM-VARIETY OF HIS YOUTHFUL STUDIES AND PURSUITS.

To Mr. Watt, of Greenock, and Agnes his wife, there were born five children, of whom the three eldest-two sons and a daughter-died in infancy or early childhood. The fourth was James, the subject of this biography, who was born on the 19th day of January, 1736; and the fifth was John, who was born in 1739, and died at sea, as has already been mentioned, in 1762. He had been destined to follow his father's business, and the fatal voyage to America, on which he was sent while still so young, was probably considered as likely to prove highly advantageous, by increasing his experience of nautical affairs, and enlarging the horizon of his observation, and it is curious to observe how decidedly a turn for scientific pursuits seems, in some measure at least, to have been common to every male of that family, so as to have become almost the birthright of both of the grandsons of Thomas Watt, "the old mathematician." And it may be added that the same inclination continued to "run in their veins," till the line of direct male descent itself became extinct, by the death, without issue, of both of the sons of the illustrious improver of the steam-engine.

The childhood of James Watt presents us with the spectacle, only too frequent in the histories of men of genius, of great delicacy of constitution, and consequent inability to bear an equal