IVORY. 155 



Mr. Smiles thus concludes a long and interesting account of Cort 

 in his ' Industrial Biography : ' " Though Cort died in comparative 

 poverty, he laid the foundations of many gigantic fortunes. He 

 may be said to have been, in a great measure, the author of our 

 modern iron aristocracy, who still manufacture after the processes 

 which he invented or perfected, but for which they never paid him 

 one shilling of royalty. These men of gigantic fortunes have owed 

 much, we might almost say everything, to the ruined projector of 

 ' the little mill at Fonltey.' Their wealth has enriched many families 

 of the older aristocracy, and has been the foundation of several 

 modern peerages. Yet Henry Cort, the rock from which they were 

 hewn, is already all but forgotten ; and his surviving children, now 

 aged and infirm, are dependent for their support upon the slender 

 pittance,* wrung by repeated entreaty and expostulation, from the 

 state." Smiles's Industrial Biography. London, 1863. Mechanics' 

 Magazine, 1859-60-61. 



JAMES IVORY, F.R.S., &c. 



Bom 1765. Died September 21, 1842. 



This distinguished mathematician was born at Dundee and re- 

 ceived the elements of his education in the public schools of that 

 town. His father was a watchmaker and intended that his son 

 should become a clergyman of the church of Scotland, for which 

 purpose he sent him, when fourteen years old, to the University of 

 St. Andrews. Here Ivory remained for six years, and had for his 

 fellow student, Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Leslie, with whom, at the 

 end of the above period he removed to the University of Edinburgh, 

 where he remained one year to complete the course of study re- 

 quired as a qualification for admission into the church of Scotland. 

 Circumstances, however, seem to have prevented Ivory from carry- 

 ing out the intentions of his father, for, on leaving the university in 

 1786, he became an assistant teacher in an academy at that time 

 recently established in Dundee. After remaining at this academy 

 for three years, Ivory, in company with several others, established 

 a factory for spinning flax at Douglastown, in Forfarshire. In this 

 apparently uncongenial occupation he remained for fifteen years 

 (from 1789 to 1804), but the undertaking proved unsuccessful and 

 in 1804 the company ceased to exist. Mr. Ivory then obtained the 



* After many appeals, a pension of 50Z. a-year was granted by the Crown to 

 Richard Cort, the sole surviving son of Henry Cort. 



