WATT IN PRIVATE LIFE. 441 
petence on such a subject, may I not be permitted to 
regret that a treatment which counted a Watt and a Jen- 
ner among its adherents, has been entirely abandoned, 
although no series of experiments can be cited in mani- 
fest opposition to those of the Pneumatic Institution at 
Clifton ? * 
WATT IN PRIVATE LIFE.—DETAILS OF EVENTS AND 
OF HIS DISPOSITION. —-HIS DEATH. — NUMEROUS 
STATUES ERECTED TO HIS MEMORY.—REFLECTIONS. 
U 
Watt had married, in 1764, his cousin, Miss Miller. 
She was an accomplished person, of superior mind, and 
whose never failing sweetness and cheerfulness of dispo- 
sition soon raised the celebrated engineer from the indo- 
lence, the melancholy and the misanthropy that a ner- 
vous illness and the injustice of man threatened to render 
fatal. But for Miss Miller, Watt would probably never 
have made his beautiful inventions public. Four chil- 
dren, two boys and two girls, were the fruit of this mar- 
riage. Mrs. Watt died at the birth of a third boy, who 
did not survive. Her husband was then busy in the 
north of Scotland, with the plans for the Caledonian 
Canal. Why should I not be permitted to transcribe 
here with all their originality some lines from the journal 
to which he committed daily his most private thoughts, 
his fears, his hopes! Why should I not show him to 
you, after his misfortune, stopping on the sill of the door 
of his house where his sweet weleomer no longer awaited 
* Twenty years before the establishment of the Pneumatic Insti- 
tution at Bristol, Watt already applied his chemical and minerological 
knowledge to improving the products of a pottery that he had estab- 
lished at Glasgow together with some friends, and of which he con- 
tinued a partner to the end of his life. 
19 * 
