452 JAMES WATT. 



whose renown will go on increasing from age to age with 

 the progress of knowledge. When such heresies are 

 brought forward in open daylight, we ought not to dis- 

 dain combating them. It is not without reason that the 

 public has been called a sponge of prejudices ; now pre- 

 judices are like noxious weeds, the slightest effort suffices 

 to extirpate them on their first appearance ; but, on the 

 other hand, they resist if they are allowed time to grow, 

 to expand, to seize by their numerous organs all that is 

 suited to their nature. 



If this discussion should wound the self-love of some 

 people, I must remark that it has been provoked. Have 

 the learned men of our own times uttered complaints at 

 not seeing any of the great authors, whose inheritance 

 they cultivate, figure in those long ranges of colossal 

 statues, which authority pompously raises on our bridges 

 and in our public squares ? Do they not know that 

 their monuments are fragile, that storms upset and de- 

 stroy them, that frost suffices to spoil their outlines, and 

 to reduce them to amorphous blocks ? 



Their sculpture and their painting is the press. Thanks 

 to that admirable invention, when the works which science 

 or imagination produces possess real merit, they may defy 

 time and political revolutions. Neither the exigencies of 

 the Exchequer, nor the inquietudes and terrors of des- 

 pots, could prevent those productions from penetrating 

 beyond the best-guarded frontiers. A thousand ships 

 will carry them, in various shapes, from one hemisphere 

 to the other. They will be read in Iceland and in Van 

 Diemen's Land at the same time. They will be read at 

 evening meetings in the humble cottage, they will be read 

 in brilliant assemblies in palaces. The author, the artist, 

 the engineer are known, appreciated, by the whole world, 



