136 A Journey to London in 1840. 



this respect the existence of the railroad in question will affect 

 the monoply for the transit of goods which the Clyde has hitherto 

 enjoyed, and will reduce the rate of freight or at least prevent 

 it from getting too high, thus securing the public advantage. 

 To me the most interesting object connected with the river was 

 the obelisk erected on Dumglass point in honour of Henry Bell, 

 who had the distinction of being the first person in Europe who 

 successfully applied the steam engine to navigation. This was 

 in 1812. But Fulton had accomplished a similar achievement 

 on the Hudson so early as 1807, and steamboats were common 

 in the United States at the date when Henry Bell introduced 

 steam navigation into this country. Poor Bell, who was nomin- 

 ally an engineer, but who chiefly supported himself as a bath- 

 keeper in Helensburgh, was neglected during his life, yet a 

 splendid monument has been erected to his memory. Such is 

 often the fate of merit and of genius. His widow, who is still 

 living, earns a humble livelihood like her ingenious husband as 

 a keeper of baths. James Watt, to whom the term illustrious 

 is more due than perhaps to any other man, inasmuch as his 

 invention has exercised a greater and more beneficial influence on 

 the history and state of the human race than any other circum- 

 stance ever did — this great man was born in Greenock. A bust 

 of him by Chantrey has been placed in the public reading-room. 

 It is of white marble and of colossal size ; the pedestal on which 

 the figure is placed is, if I remember well, of a darkish variegated 

 marble from the Hebrides. As I sailed down the Clyde, while I 

 was not unmindful of its rapidly increasing commercial greatness, 

 traces of which were seen on every hand, at Duntocher, on the 

 Leven above Dumbarton, at Greenock, etc., etc., I recalled to 

 mind the names of several authors whose birthplace was in this 

 neighbourhood: Dr Smollett, Professor John Anderson, the 

 founder of the Andersonian University ; George Buchanan, etc. 

 Anderson's grandfather, who was successively minister at Dum- 

 barton and Glasgow, was also an author, having written some 

 polemical works against Episcopacy and in comn- cndation of his 

 own favourite Presbyterian polity. The Professor was born in 

 the manse of Roseneath, of which parish his father, James Ander- 

 son (d. 1744), was minister. The real glory of a country, says 

 Samuel Johnson, consists in its authors, and nothing to me is 

 more intensely interesting than to visit spots hallowed as the 



