WATT IN PRIVATE LIFE. 441 



petence on such a subject, may I not be permitted to 

 regret that a treatment which counted a Watt and a Jen- 

 ner among its adherents, has been entirely abandoned, 

 ahhough no series of experiments can be cited in mani- 

 fest opposition to those of the Pneumatic Institution at 

 Clifton ? * 



WATT IN PRIVATE LIFE. DETAILS OF EVENTS AND 



OF HIS DISPOSITION. HIS DEATH. NUMEROUS 



STATUES ERECTED TO HIS MEMORY. — REFLECTIONS. 



Watt had married, in 1764, his cousin. Miss Miller. 

 She was an accomplished person, of superior mind, and 

 whose never failing sweetness and cheerfulness of dispo- 

 sition soon raised the celebrated engineer from the indo- 

 lence, the melancholy and the misanthropy that a ner- 

 vous illness and the injustice of man threatened to render 

 fatal. But for Miss Miller, Watt would probably never 

 have made his beautiful inventions public. Four chil- 

 dren, two boys and two girls, were the fruit of this mar- 

 riage. Mrs. Watt died at the birth of a third boy, who 

 did not survive. Her husband was then busy in the 

 north of Scotland, with the plans for the Caledonian 

 Canal. Why should I not be permitted to transcribe 

 here with all their originality some lines from the journal 

 to which he committed daily his most private thoughts, 

 his fears, his hopes ! Why should I not show him to 

 you, after his misfortune, stopping on the sill of the door 

 of his house where his siveet welcomer no longer awaited 



* Twenty years before the establishment of the Pneumatic Insti- 

 tution at Bristol, Watt already applied his chemical and minerological 

 knowledge to improving the products of a pottery that he had estab- 

 lished at Glasgow together with some friends, and of which he con- 

 tinued a partner to the end of his life. 

 19* 



