vreter r= oe eo oe ae oF 
452 JAMES WATT. 
whose renown will go on increasing from age to age with 
the progress of knowledge. When such heresies are 
brought forward in open daylight, we ought not to dis- 
dain combating them. It is not without reason that the 
public has been called a sponge of prejudices ; now pre- 
judices are like noxious weeds, the slightest effort suffices — 
to extirpate them on their first appearance ; but, on the 
other hand, they resist if they are allowed time to grow, 
to expand, to seize by their numerous organs all that is 
suited to their nature. 
If this discussion should wound the self-love of some 
people, I must remark that it has been provoked. Have 
the learned men of our own times uttered complaints at 
not seeing any of the great authors, whose inheritance 
they cultivate, figure in those long ranges of colossal 
statues, which authority pompously raises on our bridges 
and in our public squares? Do they not know that 
their monuments are fragile, that storms upset and de- 
stroy them, that frost suffices to spoil their outlines, and 
to reduce them to amorphous blocks ? 
Their sculpture and their painting is the press. Thanks 
to that admirable invention, when the works which science 
or imagination produces possess real merit, they may defy 
time and political revolutions. Neither the exigencies of 
the Exchequer, nor the inquietudes and terrors of des- 
pots, could prevent those productions from penetrating 
beyond the best-guarded frontiers. A thousand ships 
will carry them, in various shapes, from one hemisphere 
to the other. They will be read in Iceland and in Van 
Diemen’s Land at the same time. They will be read at 
evening meetings in the humble cottage, they will be read 
in brilliant assemblies in palaces. The author, the artist, 
the engineer are known, appreciated, by the whole world, 
