STEAM NAVIGATION. 



1. IF the spirits of Watt, Trevithick, and Fulton can look down 

 on the things of this nether world, and behold the grand results 

 their discoveries and inventions have produced, what triumph 

 must be theirs ! For half a century the steam-engine had re- 

 mained a barren fact in the archives of science, when the self- 

 taught genius of the Glasgow mechanic breathed into it the spirit 

 of vitality, and conferred upon it energies by which it revived the 

 drooping commerce of his country, and, when the auspicious 

 epoch of general peace^ arrived, diffused its beneficial influence to 

 the very skirts of civilisation. Scarcely had the fruit of the 

 labour of Watt ripened, and this great mover been adopted as 

 the principal power in the arts and manufactures, than its uses 

 received that prodigious extension which resulted from its acquir- 

 ing the LOCOMOTIVE character. As it had previously displaced 

 animal power in the MILL, and usurped its nomenclature, so it 

 now menaced its displacement on the ROAD. A few years more 

 witnessed perhaps the greatest and most important of all the 

 manifold agencies of steam that by which it has given wings to 

 the ship, and bade it laugh to scorn the opposing elements, trans- 

 porting it in triumph over the expanse of the trackless ocean, 

 regardless of wind or current, and conferring upon locomotion 

 over the deep a regularity, certainty, and precision, surpassed by 

 nothing save the movement of chronometers or the course of the 

 heavenly bodies. Such are the vast results which have sprung 

 from the intelligence of men, none of whom shared those privi- 

 leges of mental culture enjoyed by the favoured sons of wealth ; 

 none of whom grew up within the walls of schools or colleges, 

 drawing inspiration from the fountains of ancient learning ; none 

 of whom were spurred on by those irresistible incentives to genius 

 arising from the competition of ardent and youthful minds, and 

 from the prospect of scholastic honours and professional advance- 

 ment. Sustained by that innate consciousness of power, stimu- 

 lated by that irrepressible force of will, so eminently characteristic 

 of, and inseparable from, minds of the first order, they, in 

 their humble and obscure positions persevered against adverse and 

 embarrassing circumstances, impelled by the faith that was in 

 them, against the doubts, the opposition, and, not unfrequently, 

 the ridicule of an incredulous world, until at length, by time and 

 patience, truth was triumphant, and mankind now gathers the 

 rich harvest sown by these illustrious labourers. 



2. It was about the eighth year of the present century that 

 Fulton launched the first steamboat on the Hudson. After the 

 lapse of four years the first European steamboat was established 

 on the Clyde. From that time the art of steam-navigation, in 

 the two great maritime and commercial nations, advanced with a 

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