ACADEMICAL HONOURS. 467 
them with other labours that have been too much vaunted ; 
and whose real influence at the tribunal of reason, will 
always remain circumscribed to a circle of a few individ- 
uals, and a short compass of years. 
They used formerly to appeal to the age of Augustus, 
then to the age of Louis XIV. Some eminent minds 
have already maintained that it would be justice to speak 
of the age of Voltaire, of Rousseau, of Montesquieu. 
As to myself, I do not hesitate to announce, that when to 
the immense services already rendered by the steam- 
engine, all the wonders are added that it still promises, 
grateful nations will also speak of the ages of Papin and 
of Watt! 
ACADEMICAL TITLES WITH WHICH WATT WAS IN- 
VESTED. 
A biography of Watt, intended to make part of our 
collection of memoirs, would certainly be incomplete if 
it did not contain a list of the academical titles with which 
the illustrious engineer was invested. This list, more- 
over, will occupy only a few lines :— 
contemporary philosophers had made conjectures on the subject that 
did not differ widely from truth, Newton, by an inductive ascent 
through a train of abstruse investigations to its principle, and thereby 
detecting and expounding its laws, is justly recognized as the author 
of the sublime hypothesis of Graviration. Who will deny to 
Herschel the merit of discovering the planet Uranus, since Flamsteed 
had previously observed it as a star? Or still later, because some 
philosophers thought that there might exist a planet exterior to 
Uranus, who would deny the palm to those whose energies were 
awakened by the orbital tremblings of that outer body to the splendid 
discovery of Neptune? In reality, De Caus, Worcester, and Papin 
may be placed with respect to Watt, as Gilbert, Kepler, and Hooke 
are to Newton; or as Lambert, De Zach, and Bode will be to Le 
Verrier and Adams.— Translator. 
