284 M. Arago's Biographical Memoir of James JVatt. 



satisfactory, are now to be seen in various private collections, 

 both of Scotland and England. The illustrious engineer pre- 

 sented them to amateurs somewhat facetiously, as the first 

 attempts of a young artist entering upon the eighty-third 

 year of his age. 



Of that eighty-third year, our associate was not permitted to 

 see the end. In the commencement of the spring of the year 

 1819, alarming symptoms appeared, which defied all the powers 

 of medicine. Mr Watt was himself perfectly aware of his situa- 

 tion, and often remarked to the numerous friends who visited 

 him, that he was deeply affected ynih. the strong attachment 

 they manifested towards him, and that he was the more anxious 

 to thank them, because he had arrived at his last illness. His 

 son appeared to him not sufficiently resigned ; and every day 

 he sought some new occasion to point out to him with gentle- 

 ness, kindness, and tenderness, the many causes of consolation 

 which the circumstances of the inevitable event still presented. 

 That mournful event happened on the 25th of August 1819. 



Watt was interred in the burying-ground of the parish 

 church of Handsworth, near Birmingham, in Staffordshire. Mr 

 James Watt, whose distinguished talents and noble senti- 

 ments, for nearly twenty-five years, enhanced the happiness 

 of his father's life, has erected to him a splendid Gothic mo- 

 nument which makes the church of Handsworth extremely 

 remarkable. In the centre of the structure, there is an ad- 

 mirable statue, in marble, by Chantrey, which is a very faith- 

 ful representation of the noble features of the original. 



A second statue, likewise in marble, from the hand of the 

 same master, has also, by filial affection, been placed in one 

 of the halls of the celebrated university, where, in his youth, 

 the artist, yet unknown and exposed to the persecution of the 

 corporations, received encouragement so flattering, and so well 

 merited. Nor has the town of Greenock forgotten that it can 

 boast of being the birthplace of Watt. Its inhabitants have 

 ordered, at their own expense, a marble statue to the illus- 

 trious mechanist. It is to be placed in a beautiful library, 

 built on a site presented gratuitously by the late Sir Michael 

 Shaw Stewart, and in which will be united the books of 



