JAMES, a philosopher, mechanician, and civil engineer, whose inventive talents, extensive knowledge of the sciences and arts, and practical application of them to the purposes of life, place him in the foremost rank of those illustrious men whose discoveries have influenced the state of society, and conferred distinction upon their country and age.

His great-grandfather fancied his own small estate in the county of Aberdeen, but engaging in the civil wars, was killed in one of Montrose's battles, and his property lost to his family. His son, Thomas Watt, left an infant, was brought up by relations, and having a turn for the mathematical sciences, made such proficiency by his own exertions, under very untoward circumstances, occasioned by the persecutions of the times, as to enable him at a later and quieter period to establish himself at Greenock as a teacher of these sciences, and of the dependent arts of surveying and navigation. There he acquired reputation, and dying in 1734, at the advanced age of ninety-one, left a brief record of his partiality to his profession in the inscription upon his tomb in the West Churchyard. He is there styled professor of the mathematics. He had two sons, John and James; the former, brought up as a mathematician, settled first at Ayr and afterwards at Glasgow, where he was much employed in surveying and directing the improvement of estates, was an able man, and drew neatly and accurately, which was not very common in those days. He died in 1737, at an early age, leaving "A Survey of the River Clyde, from Glasgow to the Point of Toward," which was published by his brother several years afterwards. James, his younger brother, of an active, ingenious, and enterprising mind, became a merchant in Greenock, and was for upwards of twenty years a member of the town council, a magistrate, and a zealous promoter of the improvements of the town. By his wife, Agnes Muirhead, he had two sons, James, the subject of the present article, and John, a youth of promising abilities, who was lost at sea soon after he became of age. Misfortunes in trade, and the decay of the faculties of his mind, occasioned his retirement from business some years before his death, which happened in 1782, in his eighty-fourth year.

James Watt, his eldest son and only surviving child, was born at Greenock the 19th January 1736. He received the rudiments of his education in the public schools of his native town; but, from the extreme delicacy of his constitution, was with difficulty enabled to attend the classes, and owed much of his acquirements to his studious habits at home. Little more is known of his early years, than that, from the first, he manifested a partiality for mechanical contrivances and operations, and frequently employed himself in that way. The desire of improvement in an art then little practised in Scotland, induced him to go to London in his eighteenth year, and there to place himself under the tuition of a mathematical instrument maker;

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1 It may be interesting to the readers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica to know that the following article on James Watt was contributed in 1823 by the son of the great mechanician, the late James Watt of Birmingham. A few necessary emendations have been made on it, chiefly drawn from the Origin and Progress of the Mechanical Inventions of James Watt, by his kinsman, James P. Muirhead, M.A., 3 vols. 1854; and from the Life of James Watt by the same author, 1858. The character of Watt appended to the biography is from the brilliant pen of the late Lord Jeffrey, who knew the engineer well, and enjoyed much of his esteem. Further information regarding Watt and his discoveries will be found in the Sixth Preliminary Dissertation, by Principal Forbes, prefixed to this work. but he remained little more than a twelvemonth, the infirm state of his health compelling his return to his paternal roof.

In that short period he appears to have made great proficiency, and he continued, after his return to Scotland, to perfect himself in this art, both at home and on his visits to his mother's relations at Glasgow, where it was his wish to establish himself. But some opposition being made by the corporations, who considered him as an intruder upon their privileges, the professors of the university took him under their protection, and accommodated him with an apartment and premises for carrying on his business within their precincts, with the title and office of mathematical instrument maker to the university. This took place in 1767, when he was twenty-one years of age, and it must be inferred that he had already given satisfactory proofs of talent to the eminent men who then adorned that seat of learning; of whom it is sufficient to mention the names of Robert Simson, Adam Smith, Dr Black, and Dr Dick, the professor of natural philosophy. There Mr Watt applied sedulously to business, and in the few intervals which its concerns and ill health allowed, cultivated those various talents which distinguished him in after-life; and there a lasting friendship was formed with the kindred minds of Dr Black, and of Mr, afterwards Dr Robison, then a student at the university, and nearly of his own age. He remained in the college until some time in the year 1763, when he removed into the town previously to his marriage with his cousin, Miss Miller, which took place in the summer of the following year.

The steam-engine had been a frequent subject of conversation between Mr Robison and himself, and the former had suggested the possibility of its application to the moving of wheel-carriages. About the year 1761 or 1762, Mr Watt had tried some experiments on the force of steam in a Papin's digester, and had constructed and worked with strong steam a small model, consisting of an inverted syringe, the bottom of the rod of which was loaded with a weight, alternately admitting the steam below the piston, and letting it off to the atmosphere. Observing the imperfections of this construction, he soon abandoned it; but the attention necessary to be bestowed upon his business prevented his reconsidering it, until the winter of 1763-4, when he was employed by the professor of natural philosophy to put in order a working model of a steam-engine upon Newcomen's construction. When he had repaired it and set it to work, he found that the boiler, though large in proportion to the cylinder, was barely able to supply it with steam for a few strokes per minute, and that a great quantity of injection-water was required, though it was but lightly loaded by the pump attached to it. It soon occurred that the cause lay in the little cylinder (2 inches diameter, 6 inches stroke), exposing a greater surface to condense the steam than the cylinders of larger engines did, in proportion to their respective contents. By shortening the column of water in the pump, less steam and less injection-water were required, and the model worked at a proper speed. Thus the purpose for which it was put into his hands was accomplished; and with this mode of accounting for the defect, and this result, most artists would have been satisfied; but the case was different with Mr Watt. He had now become aware of a great consumption of steam, and his curiosity was excited to a more accurate investigation of the causes, in which he proceeded in a truly philosophical manner. The cylinder of his small model being of brass, he conceived that less steam would be condensed by substituting cylinders of some material which would transmit heat more slowly. He made a larger model, with a cylinder (6 inches diameter and 1 foot stroke) of wood soaked in oil and baked to dryness. He ascertained, from experiments made with boilers of various constructions, that the evaporation of boiling water is neither in proportion to the evaporating surface, nor to the quantity of water, as had been supposed, but to the heat that enters it; and that the latter depended chiefly on the quantity of surface exposed to the action of the fire. He likewise determined the weight of coal required for the evaporation of any given quantity of water. Being convinced that there existed a great error in the statement which had been previously given of the bulk of water when converted into steam, he proceeded to examine that point by experiment, and discovered that water, converted into steam of the heat of boiling water, was expanded to 1800 times its bulk, or, as a rule for ready calculation, that a cubic inch of water produced a cubic foot of steam. He constructed a boiler to be applied to his model, which should show, by inspection, the quantity of water evaporated, and consequently would enable him to calculate the quantity of steam used in every stroke of the engine. This he now proved to be several times the full of the cylinder. He also observed, that all attempts to improve the vacuum, by throwing in more injection water, caused a disproportionate waste of steam; and it occurred to him that the cause of this was the boiling of water in vacuo at very low heats (recently determined, by Dr Cullen, to be under 100°); consequently, at greater heats, the injection-water was converted into steam in the cylinder, and resisted the descent of the piston. He now perceived clearly that the great waste of steam proceeded from its being chilled and condensed by the coldness of the cylinder before it was sufficiently heated to retain it in an elastic state; and that, to derive the greatest advantage, the cylinder should always be kept as hot as the steam which entered it, and that, when the steam was condensed, it should be cooled down to 100°, or lower, in order to make the vacuum complete. Early in 1765, the fortunate thought occurred to him of accomplishing this by condensing the steam in a separate vessel, exhausted of air, and kept cool by injection, between which and the cylinder a communication was to be opened every time steam was to be condensed, while the cylinder itself was to be kept constantly hot. No sooner had this occurred to him, than the means of effecting it presented themselves in rapid succession. These in a great measure have already been described in the present work. A model was constructed, and the experiments made with it placed the correctness of the theory, and the advantages of the invention, beyond the reach of doubt.

In the course of these trials he was much struck by the great heat communicated to the injection-water by a small quantity of steam; and he proceeded by a very simple experiment to satisfy himself upon that subject, when he discovered that water converted into steam will heat about six times its own weight of water at 47° or 48° to 212°. He mentioned this extraordinary fact to Dr Black, who then explained to him his doctrine of latent heat, to the support of which Mr Watt had afterwards the satisfaction of contributing his experiments. From some of these he was led to suppose the latent heat of steam to be above 1000°, but he afterwards considered 960° a more accurate determination. From others, he deduced the important conclusion, that the sum of the latent and sensible heat of steam, at different temperatures, is a constant quantity, the latent heat increasing as the sensible heat diminishes; or, in other words, that a given weight of water in the state of steam contains nearly the same quantity of heat, whatever may be the bulk or density of the steam.

He also, at this time, made experiments upon the capacities of different bodies for heat, and upon the heats at which water boils under various pressures; from which he ascertained, that where the heats proceeded in an arithmetical, the elasticities proceeded in a geometrical ratio, the curve of which he laid down. These he repeated some years after with more accuracy.

We have been thus minute in our details of the successive steps by which Mr Watt proceeded to his great improvement upon the principle of the steam-engine, in order to convey some idea of the sagacity, ingenuity, and science, with which he conducted the investigation. Our limits will oblige us to be more brief in our narrative of his subsequent improvements.

From this period (the early part of 1765), his mind became very much engaged in contriving the machinery for executing his improvement upon a large scale; but the want of funds prevented his attempting it, until he was induced to address himself to Dr Roebuck, who had a short time before completed his establishment of the Carron Ironworks, and who, in addition to his known qualities of ingenuity and enterprise, was considered to be possessed of ample means of introducing the invention to the public. He agreed to enter into the plan, upon having the proceeds of two-thirds of the invention assigned to him; and an engine upon a large scale was then constructed by Mr Watt, at Kinnell, near Borrowstounness, where the doctor then resided, the trials made with which gave satisfaction. But the introduction of the invention to the public was retarded, on the one hand, by the pecuniary difficulties in which the doctor became involved, by the failure of several of his multifarious undertakings; and, on the other, by the employment which the rising reputation of Mr Watt for knowledge and skill in the line of a civil engineer procured him.

He was employed in 1767 to make a survey for a canal of junction between the rivers Forth and Clyde, by what was called the Lomond Passage, and attended parliament on the part of the subscribers, where the bill was lost. An offer was then made to him of undertaking the survey and estimate of an intended canal for the Monkland Collieries to Glasgow; and these proving satisfactory, the superintendence of the execution was confided to him. This was quickly followed by his being employed by the Trustees for Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland to make a survey of a canal from Perth to Forfar, through Strathmore; and soon afterwards by the Commissioners of the Annexed Estates, to furnish a report and estimate of the relative advantages of opening a communication between the Firth of Clyde and the Western Ocean, by means of a navigable canal across the isthmus of Crinan, or that of Tarbert. Business of this description crowded upon him; and surveys, plans, and estimates, were successively undertaken by him for the harbours of Ayr, Port-Glasgow, and Greenock; the deepening of the river Clyde; the rendering navigable the rivers Forth and Devon, and the water of Leven; the making of a canal from Machrihanish Bay to Campbeltown, and of another between the Grand Canal and the harbour of Borrowstounness; the building of bridges at Hamilton and at Rutherglen, &c. &c. In these surveys he made use of a new micrometer, and a machine for drawing in perspective, which he had invented to facilitate his operations. Our limits do not allow us to go into the details of his Reports, which are remarkable for their perspicuity and accuracy, although the work of a self-taught engineer. The last and greatest work upon which he was employed was the survey and estimate of the line of a canal between Fort-William and Inverness, since executed by Mr Telford upon a larger scale than was at that time proposed, under the name of the Caledonian Canal.

Whilst engaged upon this survey, in the latter part of the year 1773, Mr Watt received the account of the death of his affectionate wife, who left him a daughter and a son. He appears soon after to have made up his mind to adopt the advice of his friend Dr Small of Birmingham, and the invitation of Mr Boulton, to settle in England. He had secured his title to his Improvements for saving Steam and Fuel in Fire-engines, by patent, in the year 1769; but all hopes of carrying them into effect by the assistance of Dr Roebuck being at an end, he had induced that gentleman to agree, for certain considerations, to transfer his share of the patent to Mr Boulton of Soho, near Birmingham,—a gentleman equally distinguished by his knowledge of the arts and his enterprising spirit, who had some years before established his manufactory upon a scale as unrivalled for extent and elegance as for the variety and perfection of the processes carried on. In conjunction with him, an application was made to parliament for an extension of the term of the patent; and an act prolonging it for twenty-five years was obtained in the year 1775, when the business of making steam-engines was commenced by the firm of Boulton and Watt.

Mr Watt now married for his second wife Miss Macgregor, the daughter of an old friend at Glasgow, and devoted himself to the improvement of the details of the engine with a degree of application and exertion not to be expected from his delicate and infirm state of health; and he found in his partner a zealous and able coadjutor. Some engines for pumping water were soon made upon a large scale; and the savings in fuel were demonstrated by repeated comparative trials to amount to three-fourths of the quantity consumed by those of the best construction previously in use. A deputation from the mining interests of Cornwall was sent to ascertain the fact, and their report led to the introduction of the improved engines into that county, to which they have proved of such vast utility.

The immediate application of the powers of steam to giving a rotatory motion to mills had formed an early object of Mr Watt's attention, and he had deeply considered the various means of effecting this. One method of producing a continued movement in one direction was by a steam-wheel, described in his patent of 1769. Various others of a similar kind suggested themselves to him, of some of which drawings and models were made; but the difficulty of rendering them steam and air tight, and the loss of power by friction, induced him to turn his thoughts to the adaptation of the reciprocating motion to the production of a continued regular rotatory one. This he accomplished by a series of improvements, the exclusive property of which he secured by successive patents in the years 1781, 1782, 1784, and 1785, including, among other inventions, the rotatory motion of the sun and planet wheels, the expansive principle, the double engine, the parallel motion, and the smokeless furnace. The application of the centrifugal regulating force of the governor gave the finishing stroke to the machine.

The invention of the separate condenser, and the contrivances necessary to give it full effect, would alone have established the fame of Mr Watt; but when to these are added the various inventions called forth to perfect his rotative engines, we are impressed by a union of philosophical research, of physical skill, and of mechanical ingenuity, which has, we believe, no parallel in modern times. The perfection thus given to the rotative engine soon led to its general application for imparting motion to almost every species of mill-work and machinery, and gave an impulse, unexampled in the history of inventions, to the extension of our manufactures, wealth, and population.

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1 The Crinan canal was executed several years afterwards under the direction of his friend Mr Kennie, with some variations.

2 Mr Watt had originally intended to derive the rotatory motion from the working-beam by means of a connecting-rod and crank; but the workman employed to make the model communicated it to a neighbouring manufacturer, who took out a patent for it. This stimulated Mr Watt to the invention of other means of effecting the same object, of which five are described in his patent of 1781. He afterwards used the crank, which was indeed his own, when he saw occasion, in defiance of the patentee, who never troubled him. Nor were Mr Watt's inventive powers confined to the steam-engine. The necessity of preserving accurate copies of his various drawings and of his letters, containing long and important calculations, and the desire of avoiding that labour himself, which he did not think it right to intrust to others, led him, in the year 1780, to contrive a copying apparatus, the exclusive property in which he secured by letters patent, and commenced the manufactory of them, in partnership with Mr Boulton and his friend Mr Kier, under the firm of James Watt and Company,—a contrivance of great simplicity, and of which he reaped an ample benefit in the time, labour, and expense it saved to himself, to say nothing of its advantages to the public.

In the winter of 1784-5, he put up an apparatus for heating, by means of steam, the room in which he drew and wrote. The possibility of doing this had been suggested by Colonel Cooke in the Philosophical Transactions for 1748; but we know not whether this was known to Mr Watt when he made this first practical attempt, from which he deduced proportions of surface, &c., which afterwards served to guide his firm in the introduction of the process in larger buildings.

Chemical studies engaged much of his attention during his busiest time; and at the very period when he was most engaged in perfecting his rotative engines, and in managing a business become considerable, and, from its novelty, requiring close attention, he entered deeply into the investigations then in progress relative to the constitution and properties of the different gases. Early in 1783 he was led, by the experiments of his friend and neighbour, Dr Priestley, to the important conclusion, that water is a compound of dephlogisticated and inflammable airs (as they were then called) deprived of their latent or elementary heat, and he was the first to make known this theory. This was done in a letter to Dr Priestley, dated the 26th April 1783, in which he states the doctor's experiments to have come in aid of some prior notions of his own, and supports his conclusions by original experiments. That letter Dr Priestley received in London; and, after showing it to several members of the Royal Society, he delivered it to Sir Joseph Banks, with a request that it might be read at some of the public meetings of the Society; but before that could be complied with, Mr Watt, having heard of some new experiments made by Dr Priestley, begged that the reading might be delayed. Those new experiments soon afterwards proved to have been delusive; and Mr Watt sent a revised edition of his letter to M. de Luc on the 26th November of the same year, viz. 1783, which was not read to the Society until the 29th April 1784, and appears in the Philosophical Transactions for that year, under the title of "Thoughts on the Constituent Parts of Water and of Dephlogisticated Air; with an Account of some Experiments upon that subject." In the interim, on the 15th January 1784, a paper by Mr Cavendish had been read, containing his "Experiments on the Combustion of the Dephlogisticated and Inflammable Airs," and drawing the same Inference as Mr Watt, with this difference only, that he did not admit elementary heat into his explanation. He refers in it to his knowledge of Mr Watt's paper, and states his own experiments to have been made in 1781, and mentioned to Dr Priestley; but he does not say at what period he formed his conclusions: he only mentions that a friend of his had, in the summer of 1783, given M. Lavoisier some account of his experiments, as well as of the conclusion drawn from them. It is quite certain that Mr Watt had never heard of them; and Dr Blagden has stated, that he mentioned at Paris the opinions of both the English philosophers, which were not admitted without hesitation, nor until the French chemists had satisfied themselves by experiments of their own.

Mr Watt also has the merit of being the first person to introduce into this country, and to carry into effect, on a practical scale, in any country, the bleaching of linens and cottons by oxymuriatic acid, the invention of his friend M. Berthollet. That gentleman had communicated his invention to Mr Watt at Paris, in the winter of 1786-7, whether he had proceeded with Mr Boulton, at the instance of the French government, to suggest improvements in the mode of raising water at Marly; and his mind was instantly alive to the extensive application of which it admitted. He advised M. Berthollet to secure the property by an English patent; but that he declined, and left his friend to make such use of it as he thought proper. He, in consequence, communicated it to his father-in-law, Mr Macgrigor, and gave directions for the construction of the proper vessels and machinery; and soon afterwards he himself superintended the first trials at his bleachfield near Glasgow, which proved eminently successful.

Some years after this, Mr Watt was led, by the illness of the daughter, and some apprehensions entertained for the son, who were the issue of his second marriage, to consider the subject of the medical application of the factitious airs, and to contrive various apparatus for that purpose, which were described by himself, in his friend Dr Beddoo's publications on pneumatic medicine.

We have not space to particularize other improvements introduced by Mr Watt, or at his suggestion, into various arts; for there were few arts with the details of which he was not intimately acquainted, and to the practical professors of which he was not able and willing to impart information. We shall only mention, that before he left Glasgow to settle in England, he had assisted some of his friends in the establishment of a pottery there, to the success of which his experiments and advice had greatly contributed, and in which he afterwards continued a partner. At a later period, he occupied himself much upon a composition having the transparency, and nearly the hardness, of marble, from which he had many casts. This promoted, if it did not create, a taste for sculpture and statuary, and led to his employing himself, during the last years of his life, in the contrivance of a machine for multiplying busts and other carved work, which he left in a very forward state.

Mr Watt did not escape the common lot of eminent men, that of meeting with pirates of his inventions, and detractors from his merit. The latter, indeed, were but few, and their efforts transitory; but the former were numerous, and in proportion to the benefits expected to arise from an evasion of the patent-dues claimed by Boulton and Watt, though these were established upon the liberal footing of receiving only one third of the savings of fuel compared with the best steam-engines previously in use. In consequence, the attention both of Mr Watt and Mr Boulton was greatly occupied, from the year 1792 to the year 1799, in defending their patent rights against numerous invaders, the principal of whom were supported by a portion of the mining interest of Cornwall, although the respectable part of it refused to concur in their measures. The admission of their respective sons into the partnership in 1794 infused vigour into their proceedings; and, after repeated verdicts, establishing the novelty and utility of Mr Watt's inventions, the validity of his claim was finally confirmed in the year 1799, by the unanimous decision of all the judges of the Court of King's Bench.

In 1800, upon the expiration of the act of parliament passed in his favour, he withdrew from business, resigning his shares to his two sons, of whom the youngest, Mr Gregory Watt, died soon after, having given splendid proofs of literary and philosophical talents, and left a durable record of the latter in his paper on "Basalt," in the Philosophical Transactions. Mr Watt continued to the close of his life to interest himself in the pursuits of his former associates, and to maintain an uninterrupted friendship with Mr Boulton, whom he survived several years.

On two occasions afterwards, in 1811 and 1812, he gave proofs of the undiminished powers of his mind in his former profession. In the one instance he was induced, by his grateful recollections of his residence in Glasgow, to assist the proprietors of the water-works there with a plan for supplying the town with better water, by means of a suction pipe with flexible joints, laid across the bottom of the Clyde, accompanied with instructions for insuring the supply of water on the opposite side,—a plan which answered completely, and for which the proprietors presented him with a handsome memorial of their gratitude. In the other instance he was prevailed upon, by the earnest solicitation of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, to attend a deputation of the Navy Board, and to give, with his friend Captain Huddart, and Mr J. Jessop, an opinion upon the works then carrying on at Sheerness dockyard, and the further ones projected by Messrs Rennie and Whitby. On this occasion, he no less gratified the gentlemen associated with him by the clearness of his general views, than by his knowledge of the details, and received the thanks of the Admiralty. In 1814, he yielded to the wishes of his friends in undertaking a revision of Professor Robison's articles on Steam and Steam-Engines, for an early edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and enriched them with valuable notes, containing his own experiments upon steam, and a short history of his principal improvements upon the engine itself.

His originally infirm health had been subjected to severe trials by the great exertions of his mind during the period of carrying into execution his improvements on the steam-engine, and had with difficulty resisted the cares and anxieties attending upon business, and those created by the subtleties of the law, during the protracted proceedings of seven long years. There appears to have been an organic defect in his digestion, and its effects were intensely severe sick headaches; but by continual temperance, and good management of his constitution, which he treated with much medical skill, it improved as he advanced in years; and with faculties little impaired he reached his eighty-fourth year, when, after a short illness, rather of debility than of pain, he expired in the bosom of his family at his house at Heathfield, in the county of Stafford, on the 25th August 1819.

His remains are deposited in the chancel of the adjoining parochial church of Handsworth, near those of Mr Boulton. An excellent bust had been made of him some years before his death by Mr Chantrey; and a statue was afterwards finished by the same great artist, intended by filial piety to be placed upon his tomb, and to convey to distant ages a faithful representation of those features in which the lines of intense thought were blended with the mild expression of benevolence.

Mr Watt was elected a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1784, of the Royal Society of London in 1785, and a corresponding member of the Batavian Society in 1787. In 1806, the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by the spontaneous and unanimous vote of the senate of the University of Glasgow; and, in 1808, he was elected, first a corresponding, and afterwards a foreign member of the Institute of France.

In this brief narrative of his long, busy, and useful life, we have endeavoured to confine ourselves to a statement of the principal facts, and shall now add the character drawn up soon after his death by a distinguished writer:

"It is with pain that we find ourselves called upon, so soon after the loss of Mr Playfair, to record the decease of another of our illustrious countrymen, and one to whom mankind has been still more largely indebted,—Mr James Watt, the great improver of the steam-engine.

"This name fortunately needs no commemoration of ours; for he that bore it survived to see it crowned with undisturbed and unenvied honours; and many generations will probably pass away before it shall have lost all its fame." We are assured 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 its admirable contrivances, 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 like wax before it,—draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer, and lift a ship of war like a bubble 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 waves.

"It would be difficult to estimate the value of the benefits which these inventions have conferred upon the country. There is no branch of industry that has not been indebted to them; and in all the arts of life, the application of steam-power has not only indefinitely the field of its exertions, but multiplied a thousand-fold 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, 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 mechanic power which are to aid and reward the labours of after-generations. It is to the genius of one man, too, that all this is mainly owing; and certainly no man ever before bestowed such a gift on his kind. The blessing is not only universal, but unbounded; and the freed inventors of the plough and the loom, who were stifled 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. 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 methodizing 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 canvassed in his conversation with him had been that which he had been last occupied in studying and exhausting; such were the copiousness, the precision, and the admirable cleanness of the information which he poured out upon it without effort or hesitation. Nor was this prescinditude 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 criticizing 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 from both all intellective 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 has 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 faithful 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 towards all who approached him. He rather liked to talk, at least in his later 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 unconsciously touched. He generally seemed, indeed, to have no choice or predilection for any subject of discourse rather than another; but allowed his mind, like a great cyclopaedia, to be opened at any letter his associates might chance upon, and only endeavoured 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 anyone 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 reserve and repulsion, 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 came from the lips of authority. His voice was deep and powerful, though he commonly spoke in a low and somewhat monotonous tone, which harmonized 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 of pride or levity, in his demeanour; and there was a finer expression of reposeful 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 pretension; and, indeed, never failed to put all such impostors 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 affec- tionate, but generous, and considerate of the feelings of all around him. He 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 have 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 illuminated 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 autumn 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.

This happy and useful life came at last to a gentle close. He had suffered some inconvenience through the summer; but was not seriously indisposed till within a few weeks from his death. He then became perfectly aware of the event which was approaching; and, with his usual tranquillity and benevolence of nature, seemed only anxious to point out to the friends around him the many sources of consolation which were afforded by the circumstances under which it was about to take place. He expressed his sincere gratitude to Providence for the length of days with which he had been blessed, and for his exemption from most of the infirmities of age, as well as for the calm and cheerful evening of life that he had been permitted to enjoy, after the honourable labours of the day had been concluded. And thus, full of years and honours, in all calmness and tranquillity, he yielded up his soul without pang or struggle, and passed from the bosom of his family to that of his God!

He was twice married, but has left no issue but one son, long associated with him in his business and studies, and two grandchildren by a daughter who predeceased him. He was a fellow of the Royal Societies both of London and Edinburgh, and one of the few Englishmen who were elected members of the National Institute of France. 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.

Watt, Robert, author of the well known Bibliotheca Britannica, was born of humble parents in the parish of Stewarton, Ayrshire, in the month of May 1774. After gathering what stray scraps of knowledge came within his reach as ploughboy to a neighbouring farmer, and as an attendant on "stone-dykers" in Dumfriesshire, he subsequently at the age of eighteen entered Glasgow College in 1793. Supporting himself by teaching both publicly and privately, he got through his medical studies, which he completed at Edinburgh in 1799. He commenced practice in Paisley, where he published his Cases of Diabetes and Consumption, &c., Svo, 1808. Removing to Glasgow in 1810, he there began his lectures on the theory and practice of medicine, and in 1812 published "An Address to Medical Students on the best method of prosecuting their Studies," which he appended to a Catalogue of Medical Books. In 1813, he published a Treatise on the History, Nature, and Treatment of Chincough; and in 1814, his Rules of Life, with Reflections on the Manners and Dispositions of Mankind. He was chosen president to the faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow, and was, in 1817, induced partly by the annoyance to which a lingering disease subjected him, and partly also by the extent to which he had already carried out his original design of the Bibliotheca Britannica, to give up his professional pursuits, and devote his whole attention to the elaboration of his great work. Watt died on the 12th of March 1819, at the premature age of forty-five years. The Bibliotheca Britannica, or General Index to British and Foreign Literature, was published after his death in 4 vols. 4to, 1819–1824, a remarkable performance, despite all its imperfections, and one on which Watt's name will live for centuries to come.