WATT IN PRIVATE LIFE. 441 



petence on such a subject, may I not be permitted to 

 regret that a treatment which counted a Watt and a Jen- 



O 



ner among its adherents, has been entirely abandoned, 

 although no series of experiments can be cited in mani 

 fest opposition to those of the Pneumatic Institution at 

 Clifton ? * 



WATT IN PRIVATE LIFE. DETAILS OF EVENTS AND 



OF HIS DISPOSITION. HIS DEATH. NUMEROUS 



STATUES ERECTED TO HIS MEMORY. REFLECTIONS. 



Watt had married, in 1764, his cousin, Miss Miller. 

 She was an accomplished person, of superior mind, and 

 whose never failing sweetness and cheerfulness of dispo 

 sition soon raised the celebrated engineer from the indo 

 lence, the melancholy and the misanthropy that a ner 

 vous illness and the injustice of man threatened to render 

 fatal. But for Miss Miller, Watt would probably never 

 have made his beautiful inventions public. Four chil 

 dren, two boys and two girls, were the fruit of this mar 

 riage. Mrs. Watt died at the birth of a third boy, who 

 did not survive. Her husband was then busy in the 

 north of Scotland, with the plans for the Caledonian 

 Canal. Why should I not be permitted to transcribe 

 here with all their originality some lines from the journal 

 to which he committed daily his most private thoughts, 

 his fears, his hopes ! Why should I not show him to 

 you, after his misfortune, stopping on the sill of the door 

 of his house where his sweet welcomer no longer awaited 



* Twenty years before the establishment of the Pneumatic Insti 

 tution at Bristol, Watt already applied his chemical and minerological 

 knowledge to improving the products of a pottery that he had estab 

 lished at Glasgow together with some friends, and of which he con 

 tinued a partner to the end of his life. 

 19* 



