OF THE LATE PROFESSOR ROBISON. 507 



Uian naval ; and only agreed to the latter, as it lay more in 

 the way of the Board of Longitude to help one to promo- 

 tion ill the Navy than in the Church. It appears, that he had 

 never ceased to express to Dr Blair a desire of assuming the 

 clerical character; and he actually had, from that gentleman, 

 the offer of a curacy in a living of his own, to which, however, 

 the emolument annexed was so small, that, after consultation 

 with his father, he declined accepting of it. 



But however Mr Robison's views may have varied, to one 

 object he steadily adhered, viz. the cultivation of science, and 

 the acquisition of whatever knowledge the situations he was 

 placed in brought within his reach. 



He returned, therefore, to Glasgow ; and a man whose ob- 

 ject was the prosecution of science, could not arrive at any 

 place in a more auspicious moment, as that city was about to 

 give birth to two of the greatest improvements, which, in the 

 eighteenth century, have distinguished the progress either of 

 the sciences or the arts. The one of these was the discovery 

 of Latent Heat, by the late Dr Black ; the other, was the in- 

 vention of what may be properly called a New Steam-engine, 

 by Mr Watt. The former of these eminent men was then 

 the Lecturer on Chemistry in the University, and had just 

 been led, by a train of most ingeniously contrived experi- 

 ments, to the knowledge of a principle which seemed to pro- 

 mise better for an explanation of the process which takes place 

 when heat is communicated to bodies, than any thing yet 

 know^n in chemistry, viz. that when water passes from a solid 

 to a fluid state, as much of its heat disappears, as would have 

 raised its temperature, had it remained solid, 140 degrees 

 higher than that which it actually possesses. Mr Robison 

 was already known to Dr Black, having been introduced to 



him 



