present Mr. James Watt. In September, 1773, while her husband was engaged in the design of the Caledonian canal in the North of Scotland, Mrs. Watt died in child-bed of a fifth child, who was still-born: "Would that I might here transcribe," says M. Arago, "in all their simple beauty, some lines of the journal in which he daily recorded his inmost thoughts, his fears, his hopes! Would that you could see him, after this heavy affliction, pausing on the threshold of that home, where HIS KIND WELCOMER' awaited him no more; unable to summon courage to enter those rooms where he was never more to meet 6 THE COMFORT OF HIS LIFE!' Possibly, so faithful a picture of a very deep sorrow might at last put to silence those obstinate theorists, who, without being struck by the thousands of instances to the contrary, do yet refuse qualities of the heart to every man whose intellect has been fostered by the fertile, sublime, and imperishable truths of the exact sciences!" After the lapse of some years Watt married Miss Macgregor, a person who is represented to have possessed qualities of mind which rendered her a companion every way suitable to her husband. This lady survived Watt, and died in 1832 at an advanced age. Two children were the issue of this second marriage. In the year 1800 the extended patent right, which had been granted to Boulton and Watt for their improved engine, expired, and at this time Mr. Watt retired altogether from business. He was succeeded by his two sons, the present Mr. James Watt, and Gregory, one of the children of his second marriage. The works at Soho continued to be conducted by the present Mr. Boulton, the son of the partner of Mr. Watt, and the two Messrs. Watt. In 1804 Gregory Watt died at the age of twenty-seven, of a disease of the chest. This afflicting event was deeply felt by Mr. Watt; but he did not sink under it into that state of despondency in which he has been represented to have fallen by M. Arago. On the contrary, he continued to show the same activity of mind which had characterised his whole life; nor did he lose that interest which he always took in the pursuit of literature and in society. The state of his feelings under this affliction is shown by the following extracts from letters written by him at that time, which have been published by Mr. Muirhead. "I, perhaps, have said too much to you and Mrs. Campbell on "the state of my mind. I, therefore, think it necessary to say that I am "not low spirited; and were you here, you would find me as cheerful in "the company of my friends as usual; my feelings for the loss of poor "Gregory are not passion, but a deep regret that such was his and "my lot. "I know that all men must die, and I submit to the decrees of nature, "I hope with due reverence to the Disposer of Events. Yet one stimulus "to exertion is taken away, and, somehow or other, I have lost my relish "for my usual avocations. Perhaps time may remedy that in some measure; meanwhile, I do not neglect the means of amusement which are " in my power." 66 ** 66 Heathfield, April 8th, 1805. "It is rather mortifying to see how easily the want of even the "best of us is dispensed with in the world; but it is very well it should "be so. We here, however, cannot help feeling a terrible blank in our family. When I look at my son's books, his writings and drawings, I always say to myself, where are the mind that conceived these things, and the "hands that executed them? In the course of nature, he should have said so of mine; but it was otherwise ordered, and our sorrow is un"availing. As Catullus says: 66 Nunc it, per iter tenebricosum, "But Catullus was a heathen; let us hope that he (G.) is now rejoicing " in another and a better world, free from our cares, griefs, and infirmities. "Some one has said, I shall not wholly die; and Gregory's name, his “merits and virtues, will live at least as long as those do who knew him. "You are not, from this, to conceive that we give way to grief; on the contrary, you will find us as cheerful as we ought to be, and as much "disposed to enjoy the friends we have left as ever; but we should ap"proach to brutes if we had no regrets.” 66 Mr. Watt, at the date of these letters, had entered on his seventieth year, a period after which great mental exertions are rarely made. In the summer of 1819, symptoms of indisposition manifested themselves which soon rendered Watt aware of his approaching dissolution. "I am very sensible," said he to his afflicted friends, "of the attachment you show me, and I hasten to thank you for it, as I am now come to my last illness. He died on the 25th of August, 1819. His remains were deposited in the church of Handsworth, near his estate of Heathfield. His son has raised over his grave a Gothic chapel, in the centre of which is placed a statue by Chantrey. 99 The personal character of Watt could not fail to excite the admiration and the love of those distinguished persons, whose pride and happiness it was to be admitted to a share in the friendship of the great engineer. Among these were reckoned some of the men who will leave upon the present age the deepest and most lasting impressions of their genius, and such persons have bequeathed to posterity the sentiments with which he inspired them. We cannot here do more justice to the personal character of the subject of this notice than by repeating the portraiture of it which has been given by three of the most distinguished of his friends, and of the most illustrious men of the present age. At a meeting convened in 1824, for erecting a monument to Watt, Lord Brougham pronounced a speech, from which we extract the following observations: 66 66 "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. 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 whe"ther 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 66 66 66 86 66 st straws, and tear up trees by the roots. Mr. Watt, in some sort, resem. "bled 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 specula"tions of philosophy, and could at once pass from the most sublime re"searches 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. 46 "There was one quality in Mr. Watt which most honourably 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 to others. I "have heard him refuse the honour universally ascribed to him, of being "the inventor of the steam engine, and call himself simply its improver; though, in my mind, to doubt his right to that honour, would be as inac"curate as to question Sir Isaac Newton's claim to his greatest discoveries, "because Descartes in mathematics, and Galileo in astronomy and me"chanics, 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 to 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 adula"tion pressed upon himself that which he knew to be not his own." 46 46 In the preface to the Monastery Sir Walter Scott speaks of Watt in the following terms: "There were assembled about half a score of our northern lights. "Amidst this company stood Mr. Watt, the man whose genius discovered "the means of multiplying our national resources to a degree, perhaps, even beyond his own stupendous powers of calculation and combination; bringing the treasures of the abyss to the summit of the earth - giving "the feeble arm of man the momentum of an Afrite - commanding manu"factures to arise as the rod of the prophet produced water in the "desertaffording the means of dispensing with that time and tide which "wait for no man- and of sailing without that wind which defied the "command and threats of Xerxes himself. This potent commander of the "elements this abridger of time and space- - this magician, whose cloudy 66 machinery has produced a change on the world, the effects of which, ex"traordinary as they are, are, perhaps, only now beginning to be felt. the most successful was not only the most profound man of science 66 " combiner of powers, and calculator 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 I have mentioned of "northern literati, men not less tenacious, generally speaking, of their own "fame and their own opinions, than the national regiments are supposed "to be jealous of the high character which they have won upon service. "Methinks I yet see and hear what I shall never see or hear again. In "his eighty-second year, the alert, kind, benevolent old man, had his "attention alive to every one's question, his information at every one's "command. 66 66 as you "His talents and fancy overflowed on every subject. One gentleman was a deep philologist - he talked with him on the origin of the alphabet, if he had been coeval with Cadmus ; another a celebrated critic "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. And yet, Captain Clutterbuck, when he spoke with your countryman, Jedediah Cleishbotham, you would have sworn he "had been coeval with Claverse and Burley, with the persecutors and persecuted, and could number every shot the dragoons had fired at the fugitive Covenanters. In fact, we discovered that no novel of the least celebrity escaped his perusal, and that the gifted man of science was as "much addicted to the productions of your native country, in other words, "as shameless and obstinate a peruser of novels, as if he had been a very "milliner's apprentice of eighteen." 66 In the Edinburgh newspaper, called the Scotsman, of the 4th September, 1819, immediately after the decease of Watt, the following sketch was published from the pen of Lord Jeffrey : "This name fortunately needs no commemoration of ours; for he "that bore it survived to see it crowned with undisputed and unenvied "honours; 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 manu"factures, and its power so increased, as to set weight and solidity at de"fiance. 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 ribands, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and 66 |