WATT. 375 



weaving or spinning like a quiet and industrious fe- 

 male, or turning a small lathe, or forming the fine 

 wheels of a watch, or drawing out a thread too fine 

 for sight ; when the machine, instead of sawing the 

 air aloft, and making the ground tremble around it, 

 was placed quietly on a table like a candlestick or an 

 inkstand. The latest use of the power, and the most 

 important, is steam travelling by land and water. 

 Watt himself early perceived this application of his 

 engine ; and in 1785 he took out a patent for moving 

 carriages by steam, but he does not appear to have 

 practically used his method. The attempts had been 

 numerous, and from very early times, to propel vessels 

 by steam. There seems reason to think that the 

 paddle-wheel, the only addition to the steam-engine 

 required for navigation, was known in ancient Egypt : 

 it certainly was known to the Romans. In the middle 

 of the sixteenth century a Spanish engineer exhibited 

 a steam-vessel to Charles V. The Marquis of Wor- 

 cester appears to have turned his attention to the 

 subject from some parts of the work already cited, and 

 so superciliously condemned by Hume ; and Jonathan 

 Hulls, in 1736, took out a patent for a kind of steam- 

 tug. Various similar attempts were afterwards made, 

 but with no success, and it was not until the steam- 

 engine had been improved and had become generally 

 used for all other purposes that it was applied to those 

 of locomotion. 



It is truly painful to reflect, that among the rewards 

 which this great public benefactor was destined to 

 reap for his invaluable services, was the lot of having 

 to pass many years of his life in the unenviable situa- 



