WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 445 



LIVES OF THE ENGINEERS Continued. 



"In tracing the history of English engineering from the beginning, Mr. Smiles 

 really gives a history of English civilisation. He has produced a kind of philosophical 

 biography, the progress of discovery and industrial conquest having necessarily a 

 general correspondence with the mental development of the great representatives of 

 man's external action. We think Mr. Smiles has done what was well worth the doing, 

 with skill, with honesty, with purpose, and with taste." Westminster Review. 



"There may be many here who have made themselves acquainted with a book that 

 cannot be too widely brought into public notice I mean the recent publication of a 

 popular author, Mr. Smiles, entitled 'The Lives of the Engineers.' There may be 

 those here who have read the Life of Brindley, and perused the record of his dis- 

 couragement in the tardiness of his own mind, as well as in the external circumstances 

 with which he determined to do battle, and over which he achieved his triumph. 

 There may be those who have read the exploits of the blind Metcalfe, who made roads 

 and bridges in England at a time when nobody else had learned to make them. There 

 may be those who have dwelt with interest on the achievements of Smeaton, Rennie, 

 and Telford. In that book we see of what materials Englishmen are made. These 

 men, who have now become famous among us, had no mechanics' institute,'jio libraries, 

 no classes, no examinations to cheer them on their way. In the greatest poverty, 

 difficulties, and discouragements, their energies were found sufficient for their work, 

 and they have written their names in a distinguished page of the history of their 

 country.'" The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone at Manchester 



"I have just been reading a work of great interest, which I recommend to your 

 notice I mean Smiles's ' Lives of the Engineers.' No more interesting books have 

 been published of late years than those of Mr. Smiles his ' Lives of the Engineers,' 

 his ' Life of George Stephenson,' and his admirable little book on ' Self-Help 'a most 

 valuable manual." The Right Hon. Sir Stafford Northcote at Exeter. 



"Mr. Smiles has done wisely to link the names of Boulton and Watt together in the 

 volume before us. The more we read of the correspondence between these two great 

 men during the birth of the new motive power, the more we feel convinced that the 

 Avorld has to be thankful for their happy partnership. Boulton seemed by some happy 

 chance to possess all the qualities of mind that were wanting in Watt. . . . From the 

 heaps of dusty ledgers in the counting-house at Soho, the author has drawn the 

 materials for these deeply-interesting lives, and has so handled them as to produce a 

 volume which worthily crowns his efforts in this most interesting, because before 

 untrodden, walk in literature." Times. 



" Boulton was the complement of Watt's active intelligence. . . . His is a memory 

 of which the leaders of industry in Great Britain may well be proud. His virtues were 

 the common virtues which render the English character respected throughout the 

 world, but in him they were combined with admirable harmony, and were unsullied by 

 any of those vices which too frequently degrade the reputation of our countrymen. 

 We cannot read of Mr. Boulton's grand struggle to bring the steam-engine into further 

 use without a feeling of pure admiration. ... We lay down this volume with a feeling 

 of pride and admiration that England had the honour of producing at the same time 

 two such men, whose labours will continue to benefit mankind to the remotest genera- 

 tion, and with gratitude to the distinguished biographist who preserves for the instruc- 

 tion of the times to come, pictures of them so full of life and reality." Daily News. 



" That Mr. Smiles's will be the standard life of the great engineer is simply the 

 necessity of his greater art as an industrial biographer. His skill in weaving together 

 anecdote and description, representations of what was known with a distinct specifica- 

 tion of what was contributed by his hero ; his dramatic power, in this volume especially, 

 exhibited in the contrast of the two partners, the sanguine, speculative character of 

 Boulton ; the anxious, morbid, cautious temper of Watt, one full of hope in the very 

 darkest circumstances, the other full of fear in the brightest, give the volume a won- 

 derful charm. The life of Watt is a great epic of discovery : the narrative of it by Mr. 

 Smiles is an artistic and finished poem." British Quarterly Review. 



" We venture to think that this, Mr. Smiles's most recent work, will achieve even a 

 higher popularity than those which have preceded it. We are impressed by this book 

 with the fact that hitherto, however highly public speakers and writers may have lauded 

 Watt and his achievements, the general public have really known little or nothing of 

 this great man's history, life, and character. These are admirably and graphically 

 depicted in the volume before us ; in the preparation of which the author appears to 

 have had access to a vast mass of authentic documents, of which he has made excellent 

 use." Observer. 



