y. C. Dyer, 323 



words ; and this was the case at the time of earlier discus- 

 sions, when phrases were used to which men fresher in 

 science attached a somewhat different meaning. 



Perhaps it would be unfair to let Mr. Dyer's remarks 

 (p. 307) pass without a quotation from ' Carlyle's Reminis- 

 cences' (1881), (to which the name of James Anthony 

 Froude has been attached). The passage is in vol. i., at p. 

 128. *At Greenock I first saw steamers on the water; 

 queer dumpy things with a red sail to each, and legible 

 name *' Defiance," and such like, bobbing about there, and 

 making continual passages to Glasgow as their business. 

 Not till about two years later (18 19, if I mistake not) did 

 Forth see a steamer ; Forth's first was bigger than the 

 Greenock ones, and called itself '' The Tug," being intended 

 for towing ships in these narrow waters, as I have often 

 seen it doing ; it still had no rival or conqueror till (in 1825) 

 Leith, spurred on by one Bain, a kind of half-pay Master 

 R.N., got up a large finely appointed steamer, or pair of 

 steamers for London ; which, so successful were they, all 

 ports then set to imitating. London alone still held back 

 for a good few years ; London was notably shy of the 

 steamship, great as are its doings now in that line. An old 

 friend of mine, the late Mr. Strachey, has told me that in 

 his schooldays he at one time — early in the nineties I 

 should guess, say 1793 — used to see, in crossing Westmin- 

 ster Bridge, a little model steamship paddling to and fro 

 between him and Blackfriars Bridge, with steam funnel, 

 paddlewheels, and the other outfits, exhibiting and recom- 

 mending itself to London and whatever scientific or other 

 spirit of marine adventure London might have — London 

 entirely dead to the phenomenon, which had to duck under 

 and dive across the Atlantic before London saw it again, 



Y 2 



