_ 
466 | JAMES WATT. 
whole months, your heart a prey to cruel anguish, seeking 
with an anxious eye along the horizon, for the uncertain 
glimpse of the ship that is to restore to you a father, a 
mother, a brother, or a friend. 
To conclude, the steam-engine, dragging in its train 
some thousands of travellers, will run along the railways 
much faster than the best blood horse bearing only his 
light jockey along the race-course. 
There, Gentlemen, is a very brief sketch of the bene- . 
fits bequeathed to the world by the machine, the germs 
of which Papin had deposited in his works, and which, 
after so many ingenious efforts, Watt has brought to an 
admirable perfection.* Posterity certainly will not weigh 
* A translator should not, perhaps, enter the lists, but he may in- 
trude a remark. It is difficult to opine why our author should bestir 
himself so eagerly to give Watt the composition of water, and yet im- 
pair his grand claim to universal homage by foisting in the names of 
Rivault, De Caus, and others as inventors: the early engines were: 
mere toys and pumps, and therefore foreign to the marvellous and 
almost animated machine which is now in use. Some of Watt’s ex- 
cogitations and contrivances, the product of lengthy intellectual 
struggles, are slurred over, while others are not even alluded to; and 
the difficulties he had to combat with in metallurgy are altogether 
omitted. 
We ought to be cautious in attaching an undue value to mere saga- 
cious surmises, unsupported by legitimate proof; for notions may arise 
without being brought to bear; and simultaneous ideas may be formed 
without the parties being indebted to each other. M. Arago cannot 
tell whether De Caus actually made an engine; but surely he ought, 
as a self-constituted historical umpire, to have consulted the published 
Travels of Cosmo IIL. (Grand Duke of Tuscany) in England, in the reign 
of Charles I/.,and he would there have found that the Marquis of 
Worcester actually did make one (see note to page 378). Now for all 
that is admirable in the structure of the mighty piece of mechanism, 
and really marvellous in its application, Watt was not a mere im- 
prover, but a highly-gifted inventor. We therefore insist that, to all 
its useful intents and purposes, the present SrEAM-ENGINE is a British 
production. Thus in transcendental science, although preceding and 
—or 
