WILLIAM SMITH. 26j 



Smith might have claimed long ago, had not an 

 honest desire to produce his work complete with- 

 held the attempt. The map was published on the 

 1st of August, 1815, dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks, 

 and from that hour the fame of its author as a 

 great original discoverer in English geology was 

 secured. Would that this epoch of his revived and 

 enlarged reputation had also been the dawn of 

 more prosperous fortunes, or that, satisfied with the 

 degree in which he had accomplished his gigantic 

 task, he had left to others the completion of his 

 work, and devoted himself for a time to even the 

 humblest of those professional labours by which 

 he had been at least supported through oppressive 

 difficulties, and by which he must have already 

 grown comparatively rich but for the incessant 

 drain of money in following up discoveries which 

 no living man could reasonably hope to complete. 



Science, indeed, is a mistress whose golden smiles 

 are not often lavished on poor and enthusiastic 

 suitors. The time for a strenuous exertion was 

 indeed come. Geology had kept him poor by con- 

 suming all his professional gains ; the neglect of 

 his employers too often left these unpaid ; in such 

 a condition one unfortunate step was ruin, and that 

 step was made. On the property which he had 

 purchased near Bath, and which he had greatly 

 improved, he was tempted to lay a railway for 

 bringing the freestone of Comb down to the Coal 

 Canal, to open new quarries of this stone, and to 

 establish new machinery for cutting and shaping 



