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 trnnslator sliould 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 

 Eivanlt, De Caus, and others as inventors: the early engines were 

 mere toys and pumps, and therefore foreign to tlie 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 Cos7no III. ( Grand Duke of Tuscany) in England, in the reign 

 of Charles II., 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 Steam-engine is a British 

 production. Thus in transcendental science, although preceding and 



