308 On the Rapid Production of Steam. 



not merely to supersede the use of foreign deal, but to allow of our 

 reserving the tree always esteemed the peculiar pride and boast of 

 this island, for the construction of ships of war on the largest scale. 



7. Sir Thomas Lawrence stands proudly preeminent among na- 

 tive artists, and perhaps among artists of the whole world, in that 

 department to which he exclusively applied the powers of his genius ; 

 nor would, I am persuaded, the great painter of the preceding age 

 have been unwilling to admit him as his equal in the delineation of 

 portraits — not the servile copies of individual features, but poetic 

 likenesses, where every excellence is heightened, where the mind is 

 depictured, and where the particular person seems to embody the 

 class of virtues, of intellectual powers, or of amiable qualities desig- 

 nating the moral order in which he is arranged. 



This constitutes unquestionably a department of historical paint- 

 ing, not inferior, perhaps, nor even less difficult of acquirement than 

 the others, where all is imaginary. 



The name of Reynolds must, and for various reasons, ever will 

 stand first on the Ust of those who have cultivated in this country the , 

 whole extent of an art, the most refined, requiring talents the most 

 rare, and at the same time the most delightful of all that have sprung 

 from the human mind ; — but that of Lawrence will be hailed by the 

 Academy as their Spes altera, and their Decus gemellum. 



Art. XIV. — Observations and Experiments on tJie rapid production 

 of Steam in contact with metals at a high temperature ; by Wal- 

 ter R. Johnson, Professor of Mechanics and Natural Philoso- 

 phy in the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. 



By a reference to the number of this Journal for January of the 

 present year, the reader will find an account of the method of per- 

 forming the experiments detailed in the foUov^ing pages. From the 

 data there furnished, we may readily calculate the quantity of steam, 

 of atmospheric pressure, which would be generated by any known 

 quantity of iron that should become red hot. Thus, should a boiler 

 twenty feet long and thirty inches in diameter, with a returning flue 

 one foot in diameter, be constructed of iron one fourth of an inch 

 thick, the exterior shell would give a curved surface of 157 square 

 feet, and as the specific gravity of good boiler iron is 7.770, it must 

 weigh 10 pounds 2 oz. to the square foot. The whole exterior 



