448 JAMES WATT. 
every thing connected with his father’s memory, pro- 
curred for me, in 1834, the satisfaction of finding the 
library and the furniture at Heathfield in the same state 
in which the illustrious engineer left them. Another 
property on the picturesque banks of the river Wye, in 
Wales, offers to the tourist numerous proofs of the en- 
lightened taste both of Watt and of his son, by the 
improvement of the roads, by the plantations, and by 
agricultural labours of all kinds. 
Watt’s health had become stronger with his years. 
His intellectual faculties continued in full vigour to his 
last moments. He thought at one time that they were 
declining, and adhering to the thought expressed on the 
seal that he had selected (an eye surrounded by the word 
Observare), he determined to clear up his doubts by self- 
observation ; accordingly, when above seventy, we see 
him seeking the kind of study to which he should best 
have recourse for a trial, and distressed that no subject 
was new to him. He recollects at last that there is an 
Anglo-Saxon language, that it is a difficult language, and 
the Anglo-Saxon becomes the desired experimental means, 
—the facility which he finds in rendering himself master 
of it, proves to him how unfounded his apprehensions 
were. f 
Watt devoted his last days to the construction of a 
machine for copying promptly either statues or sculpture 
of any size with mathematical fidelity. This machine, 
of which we hope the arts will not be deprived, must 
have been well advanced. Many of its productions— 
already very satisfactory—may be seen in various pri- 
vate collections in Scotland and in England. The illus- 
trious engineer had presented them in joke, as the first 
essays of a young artist entering the eighty-third year of 
his age. 
