1839.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



219 



his glory and his tomb : bom lfi32, died 1 723." At the bottom of Lud- 

 gate-hill, '• To John Drydcn; he gave Virgil a new conntry ; born at 

 Alduincle, lH'M, died 1/00, and bnried in Westminster Abbey." At 

 Chatham-plaee, " To Edmund Spenser, Prinee of tlie English Pastoral 

 Poets ; born 1553, in London, and died there, 1593, bnried in West- 

 minster Abbey." At HolI)orn-hill, on the other side, "To Abraham 

 Cowley, the chief of the JNletiiphysical Poets ; born in l()18,in London, 

 and died IGli", bm-ied in Westminster Abbey." At ,St. Clement's 

 Church, .Strand, near the Temple, of which he was member, "To 

 Geoffrey Chaucer, Father of the Poets and Friend of Petrarch ; born 

 132S, in London, and died there, 1400, bnried in Westminster Abbey." 

 On tlie other side of St. Clement's, •' To .lohn Locke, Prince of Mental 

 Philosophers ; born at Wringlon, l(i.'32, died 1704. ' Know thyself.' " 

 At St. Mary-le-Strand, near which he was born, '• To Francis Bacon, 

 Prince of the Modern Philosophers ; he found the sciences infants, 

 and madethem men ; born in 15()1, in London, he died and was buried 

 at St. Albans, 1(5213." At West Strand, with Chandos-street, leading 

 to Covent Garden, where he was born, "To Thomas Augustine Arne ; 

 he taught the English muse to sing; born in London, 17'0, died 

 1778." In Trafalgar-place, looking towards Leicester-square, where 

 he lived, " To William Hogarth, Painter of Morals and Man; born 

 in London 1698, anddiedat Chiswiek, 1762." also in Trafalgar-place, 

 looking towards his residence in St. Martin's-street, " To Isaac 

 Newton; he spanned the heavens and weighed the earth; born at 

 Woolstrop, 1642, died 1726, and bnried in Westminster Abbey." At 

 Westminster-bridge, in the neighbourhood where he was born, " O 

 rare Ben Johnson; born in Westminster, 1574, and buiied in the 

 Abbey, 1637-" On the other side of the bridge, " To Thomas Banks ; 

 he maintained the glory of English Art in Russia; born at Lambeth, 

 1738, died 1805." 



These are not solitary examples, but numbers more might be 

 adduced. In the City-road, at the end of Fore-sti'eet, near his birth- 

 place and his tomb, "To Daniel De Foe, known in all climes as the 

 Author of Robinson Crusoe; born in Cripplegale, and buried there in 

 St. Giles' Church." At the ends of the Hammersmith and Battcrsea- 

 bridges, the natives of the southern suburbs, " To Henry St. John, 

 Viscount Bolingljroke, unfortunate as he was talented ; born and died 

 at Battersea." " To Edward (lil)ljon, who in illustrating the glory of 

 Rome ensured his own ; born at Putney." Ne;ir Gracechurch-street 

 the scene of many events of his life, " To William Penn, the Founder 

 of Pennsylvania and Teacher of Benevolence to tlie Human Race ; 

 born in Loudon." On the Hackney Road, " To John Howard, the 

 Friend of the Captive ; born at Hackney, died at Chertson in Russia." 

 Also to Hampden, the great patriot ; Camden, the antiipiary ; 

 Byron, the poet ; natives of London. 



Appropriate localities might be found for all the great men, and 

 to some, memorials already exist, Pitt, Fox, Canning, Nelson, and 

 Wellington. Among those to be commemorated, it may be sufficient 

 to mention, Cabot, who gave to us North America, and thus secured 

 the perpetual glory of the Engli.s)i race ; Drake, the circnmnavigator 

 and founder of our naval power; Blake, one of our greatest seamen; 

 Cook, who gave us a new world and another empire in Australia ; 

 Marlborough, our greatest general and the ablest of his day ; Clive, 

 the founder of our power in India ; Halley, the great discoverer of 

 comets ; Roger Bacon, the greatest philosopher of the middle ages ; 

 Br.idley, who discovered the rotation of the earth's axis and the 

 aberration of light ; Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the 

 blood; Hunter, the best of our anatomists ; Jenner, who stayed the 

 arm of death; Ray, the greatest naturalist of his day ; Napier, the 

 author of logaritlims ; Dalton, who numbered atoms, and gave in- 

 visible objects laws ; Davy, who united electricity to chemistry ; 

 Young, who proved that light moved as water; Savery, wlio 

 made steam the slave of man ; Brindley, who made roads upon the 

 waters ; Hargreaves, who taught senseless powers to weave garments 

 for the human race ; Smealon, the author of the Eddystone; Watt, 

 who gave arms to the steam engine ; Trcvithick, the master of the 

 steam engine, who taught it to fly upon the roads, resist the current 

 of the waters, and drain the bowels of the Andean mauntains; Rey- 

 nolds, the prince of English artists ; Flaxman, who gave our sculpture 

 a European reputation. To these might be added some of our 

 writers wdio possess an European reputation : Addison and Steele, the 

 twin essayists; Young, the writer of the Night Thoughts; Sterne, 

 the sentimentalist; Fielding, the prince of novelists ; Smollett, the 

 novelist; Johnson, the custodiem of our language ; Goldsmith, the 

 most harmonious of our writers; Hume, the first of our historians; 

 Garrick, the prince of our actors; and two distinguished Irishmen, 

 Burke and Sheridan ; but out of compliment to the many eminent 

 foreigners who have dwelt among us, we might commemorate Erasmus, 

 the restorer of letters: Holbien, who died here ; Rubens and Vandyke, 

 who have left with us many of the finest of their works ; Handel, 

 who united his own glory with ours; Voltaire, who here first brought 



his Henriade to light ; Franklin, the man who snatched lightning 

 from heaven and the sceptre from tyrants; and Herschel, who for us 

 extended the bounds of the planetary system. 



That executing such a design would prove highly ornamental to 

 the metropolis it is cpiite unnecessary to demonstrate; .and it is 

 equally evident that it would tend to the promotion of the arts and 

 tlie diffusion of taste. Considerable variety might be introduced into 

 the form of the monuments, as Gothic crosses, Greek votive temples, 

 fountains, and the employment of bas-reliefs and accessory emblems. 

 The expense of fifty such statues might very easily be defrayed for 

 100,000/., and it is unnecessary to say that larger sums have been 

 lavished on jobs pernicious in their results, and futile as to their 

 expected benefits. Were such a grant made, considerable sums might 

 be raised by public subscription, and the Corporation of London and 

 public companies would make donations, the theatres might give 

 benefits for the dramatic heroes, and the concerts for the muNicians ; 

 and we are sure that the object is such as not to be of mere local 

 importance, but to have a claim on (he revenue of the empire. The 

 government liliewise, by making the grant in annual portions, would 

 prevent it from making any great figure in the budgets of timorous 

 Chancellors of the Exchequer, while its execution would give an 

 impulse to art, and stamp at once a character on the Victorian era. 



A. R. 



PAMBOUR ON THE STEAM ENGINE. 



Sir, — As you have often, at difl'erent times, noticed M. Panibour's 

 works on the steam engine, allow me to direct your attention to his 

 table referred to in page 02, vol. 2, of your journal. In most cases 

 therein the practical results differ very widely from the theoretical. 

 Now may not this be explained partly by taking into account the gra- 

 dient immediately before the place of trial, or, in other words,tlie accele- 

 rating or retarding force with which it enters it i* For insiance, in the 

 case of the Fury, August 4, 18:34, (page 229 of Pambour,) it drew 50 

 tons at 24 miles per hour. Now tlic theory gives 29 miles ; but imme- 

 diately before the trial plane comes a descending one of . This is 

 omitted in the table. 



In example, page 228, the Fury drew 244 tons at six miles per hour. 

 By tlie tlieory it could not have moved the load. May this result be 

 attributed to the accelerating force of the plane it had just left, or 

 altogether to the incorrectness of the theory ? 



I am Sir, 



A constant reader, 



London, April 12, 1839. H. 



IMPROVEMENT OF THE RIVER DEE AND PORT AND 

 HARBOUR OF CHESTER. 



We have read with some attention Sir John Rennie's interestinir 

 report upon the river Dee, and did uur space allow should examine it 

 at some length. After minutely entering into the views detailed both 

 for and against the improvement of the river by dredging. Sir John 

 recommends the construction of a ship canal, with docks, from 

 Chester to Heswell. At this latter place ho proposes to make an 

 entrance harlioiir in fifteen feet at low Wiiter spring tides, being five 

 miles shorter than the present couise of the river, and enabling vessels 

 drawing twenty feet water to come up to Chester at neap tides. 

 His estimate for this plan is .£ jGO,000, a sum, considering the magni- 

 tude of the undertaking, extremely moderate. There is never less, it 

 must he remembered, than twelve feet at low water spring tides 

 over the bar of the Die, while the Mersey is not only very defective, 

 but ditBcult of access ; Chester, also, is sixteen miles nearer tu London 

 than Liverpool, and would only lequire an extension of about twelve 

 miles to Preston Brook to open the communication with Manchester 

 ;ind the inland towns; while it would be backed by the extensive 

 mineral and manufacturing districts of Wales and Cheshire. Con- 

 siderable discussion has been maintjined in the Chester papers, whe- 

 ther the c.inal plan should be odopted, or whether it is preferable that 

 the river should be improved ; hut when it is stated that in order to 

 obtain the same depth by the liver as by the canal, that fioin sixteen 

 to eighteen feet mu>t be dredged out at Chester, and an aver.ige of 

 ten feet for a distance of fiftien miles below in the open tideway, that 

 the present river-bottom is composed of loose sand, which would run 

 in as fast as taken out, having a fall of only seven inches per mile, we 

 confess that we should have considerable doubts as to the propriety of 

 pursuing such a questionable course. We have lie;ird the Clyde 

 quoted as a successful example, but if, as is stated, above .£800,000 

 has been expended there in obtaining twelve feet water, for a distance 

 of twelve miles, that it has required above half a century to effect this, 



