turers of Manchester and its neighborhood, to none of whom he was personally known, held a meeting to consider the propriety of presenting to the Lords of the Treasury a memorial of his eminent services, and of the losses he had sustained through the piracies and other unfortunate circumstances to which we have alluded. In consequence of this and other applications in his favor, the sum of ten thousand pounds was soon after granted him by parliament. An amount, although munificent as a present, yet barely adequate even to repay the sums the doctor had expended in his experiments; and his family, after all, reaped no pecuniary benefit from his ingenious and persevering labors. This national recognition of his claims may be taken as a sufficient answer to some attempts that have been occasionally made to rob Dr. Cartwright of the credit of having been the author of one of the most valuable presents ever made to the manufacturing industry of his country.

As a man of education and literary habits, the inventor of the power-loom, notwithstanding his deviation from his original track of thought and study when he began to give his attention to mechanics, may yet be said to have come even to that new line of pursuit with certain acquired advantages. He brought with him at least a mind awakened to some knowledge of its own powers by the general cultivation it had received, and not undisciplined by its accustomed exercises to habits of speculation and inquiry

JOHN WHITEHURST.

THIS individual, whose philosophical and mechanical researches have met with such universal attention, was born in Congleton, in Cheshire, April 10, 1713: he was the son of a clock and watch maker of the same name in that town.

Of the early part of his life little is known. He who dies at a very advanced age leaves few behind him to communicate anecdotes of his youth. On his leaving school, where the education he received was certainly very defective, he was bred up by his father to his own trade; in which, as in other mechanical and scientific pursuits, he soon gave intimations of future eminence.

At about the age of twenty-one, his eagerness after new ideas carried him to Dublin, having heard of an ingenious piece of me. chanism in that city, consisting of a clock with certain curious appendages, which he was extremely desirous of seeing, and no less

than of conversing with the maker. On his arrival, however, he could neither procure a sight of the former, nor draw the least hint from the latter concerning it. Thus disappointed, he thought of an expedient to accomplish his design. He accordingly took up his residence in the house of the mechanic, paying the more liberally for his board, as he had hopes of thence more readily obtaining the indulgence so eagerly wished for. As happened, he was accommodated with a room directly over that in which the favorite piece was kept carefully locked. The so long wished for opportunity soon occurred; for the artist being one day employed in examining the machine, was suddenly called down stairs. Whitehurst, ever on the alert, softly slipped into the room, inspected the machine, and having comprehended its principles, escaped undiscovered to his own apartment. His curiosity thus gratified, he shortly bid the machinist farewell, and returned to his father in England.

About two years after his adventure in Ireland, he left the place of his nativity, and entered into business for himself at Derby. His reputation as a clock and watch maker soon became very extended, and his character as a citizen such that he was enrolled as burgess.

He was also consulted in almost all the undertakings in the country round, where the aid of superior skill in mechanics, pneumatics, and hydraulics was required. His dwelling became the resort of the ingenious and scientific from every quarter, and frequently to such a degree as to impede him in the regular prosecution of his pursuits.

In 1775, when the act for the regulation of gold coin was passed, he was unexpectedly appointed to the office of stamper. In 1778, he published his "Inquiry into the Original State and Formation of the Earth;" being a work of many years' labor, and one by which he obtained considerable reputation. He was chosen a member of the Royal Society, May 13, 1779. He was also a member of some other philosophical societies, which admitted him to their respective bodies without his previous knowledge. But so remote was he from every thing that might savor of ostentation, that this circumstance was only known to very few of his confidential friends. Previous to his admission, he had inserted several different papers in their philosophical transactions.

In the summer of 1783, he made a second visit to Ireland, with a view to examine the Giant's Causeway, and other northern parts of that island, which he found to be almost entirely composed of volcanic matter; an account and representations of which were inserted in the second edition of his "Inquiry." During this ex

cursion he erected an engine for raising water from a well to the summit of a hill in a bleaching ground at Tullidoi, in the county of Tyrone. This engine was worked by a current of water, and for its utility and ingenuity was unequalled, perhaps, in any country.

In 1787 he published his "Attempt towards obtaining Invariable Measures of Length, Capacity, and Weight, from the Mensuration of Time."

Though for some years previous to his death Mr. Whitehurst felt himself declining, yet his ever active mind remitted not of its accustomed exertion. Even in his last illness, before being confined entirely to his chamber, he was proceeding at intervals to complete a Treatise on Chimneys, Ventilation, and Garden Stoves, including some other plans for promoting the health and comfort of society. He was sensible of his approaching dissolution; and on Monday, February 18, 1788, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, terminated his laborious and useful life. He died in the very house where had recently lived and died another celebrated selftaught genius, James Ferguson.

However respectable Mr. Whitehurst may have been in mechanics, he was of far higher account with his acquaintances and friends on the score of his moral qualities. To say nothing of the upright ness and punctuality of his dealings in all transactions relative to business; few men have been known to possess more benevolent affections than he, or, being possessed of such, to direct them more judiciously to their proper ends. He was a philanthropist in the truest sense of the word. Though well known to many of the great, to whose good graces flattery is generally the readiest path, it is to be recorded to his honor, that he never once stooped to that degrading mode of obtaining favor, which he regarded as the lowest vice of the lowest mind. He had, indeed, a settled abhorrence, not of flattery only, but of every other deviation from truth, at whose shrine he may be said to have been a constant worshipper. The truth of things he was daily, more or less, in the habit of investigating, and truth of action he exemplified in the whole tenor of a long and singularly useful life.

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