STATUES TO WATT. 449 



It was not permitted to our associate to see the end of 

 this eighty-third year. From the very beginning of the 

 summer of 1819, some alarming symptoms defied all the 

 powers of medicine. Watt himself was not deceived. 

 He said to the numerous friends who visited him " I 

 am moved by the attachment that you show me, I hasten 

 to thank you for it, as you see me arrived at my last ill- 

 ness." His son did not appear to him sufficiently re- 

 signed ; whereupon he each day sought a new reason by 

 which to point out to him with gentleness and tenderness, 

 " all the motives of consolation that he mi^ht derive from 



o 



the circumstances under which the inevitable event was 

 about to occur." This sad event did in fact take place 

 on the 25th of August, 1819. 



Watt was buried by the side of the parish church of 

 Heathfield, near Birmingham, in the county of Stafford. 

 Mr. James Watt, whose distinguished talents, and whose 

 noble sentiments delighted his father's heart for nearly 

 twenty-five years, erected a splendid Gothic monument 

 to him, and it now greatly adorns Handsworth Church.* 

 In the centre there stands an admirable statue by 

 Chantrey, the exact representation of the old man's 

 noble features. 



A second statue, also of marble, from the hands of the 

 same sculptor, has been placed by filial piety in one of 

 the halls of the brilliant university where, during his 

 youth, the then unknown artist, though harassed by the 

 corporation, received such flattering and well-deserved 

 encouragement. Nor has Greenock forgotten that Watt 



O O 



* To a general reader this paragraph might convey an ambiguity; 

 Watt died in his house at Heathfield, at the age of eighty-three years 

 and seven months; and his remains are deposited in the chancel of 

 the adjoining parochial church of Handsworth, near those of his ex- 

 cellent friend Miss Boulton. Translator. 



