two sons succeeded him. Under the enlightened superintendence of the present Mr. Boulton, and of the young Messrs. Watt, the Soho works continued to prosper, and even received new and important additions. They still hold the first place among the manufactories of steam-engines in England.* Gregory Watt, the son of our fellow * In speaking of the Engine Establishment of Soho, it would be improper to omit mention of the able engineers who assisted in carrying it on. Mr. Watt, in his note upon Robison, Mech. Phil. vol. ii. pp. 140-141, bears testimony to the merits of Mr. William Murdock, and some valuable improvements which he introduced. Mr. Murdock is still better known to the world by his invention of "the Application of the Gas from Coal to economical purposes;" see his Paper in the Phil. Trans. for 1808, pp. 124-132; for which the Society presented him with their large Rumford gold medal. He proved a most able and zealous assistant in the introduction of the engines into Cornwall; and, afterwards, in the construction and carrying on of the works at Soho foundry. Mr. Murdock made the first locomotive engine ever applied to the drawing of carriages, in or about the year 1784, upon the principle set forth in the fourth article of Mr. Watt's specification of 1769. “I intend in many cases to employ the expansive force of steam to press on the pistons. In cases where cold water cannot be had in plenty, the engines may be wrought by this force of steam only, by discharging the steam into the open air after it has done its office." The working model of Mr. Murdock's engine is yet in his possession, and a friend of ours still lives, who, in 1784, saw it drive a small waggon round the room. This was in Mr. Murdock's house at Redruth in Cornwall, where it was shewn to many; and, among others, to Mr. Richard Trevithick, who, in 1802, took out a patent for an engine to be applied to the driving of carriages, using the same principle, with variations. Mr. Murdock still lives, in very advanced years; and will, we trust, be able to enjoy this association of his name with that of his venerated master and friend. * Mr. John Southern, who, after Mr. Watt's retirement, conducted for many years the business of the drawing-office at Soho, and died in 1815, was an able mathematician and engineer. We have from him a small treatise on Aërostatic Machines, in 1785, and a Letter on the Elasticities of Steam under different pressures, printed in Robison's Mech. Phil. vol. ii. p. 160-175. member by his second marriage, had begun his career in the most brilliant manner, by literary compositions and geological works. He died in 1804, at the age of twenty-seven, of a disease of the chest. This afflicting event quite overpowered the great engineer. The tender care of his family and friends could with the greatest difficulty restore some comfort to a half-broken heart. It has been thought, that this too well-founded sorrow may serve to account for the almost total silence, which Watt preserved during the latter years of his life.* I am far from denying that it may not Mr. Peter Ewart, now engineer to the Admiralty at Woolwich, rendered occasionally the aid of his great skill and ingenuity. And we must not pass over the name of Mr. James Lawson, late at the head of the mechanical department of the Mint on Tower-hill; nor those of Messrs. William and Henry Creighton, brought up at Soho, whose talents were creditable both to themselves and to the establishment. The last three have been dead some years.-TR. * M. Arago has not been correctly informed on this subject. Mr. Watt's remarkable activity of mind was not impaired, nor his interest in the pleasures of literature and society destroyed, by the melancholy death of his son; and neither his conversation nor correspondence betrayed any approach to that silence, which, as recorded in the text, seems so extraordinary. These are the words of one who knew him well, and saw him often ;-" He preserved, up almost to the last moment of his existence, not only the full command of his extraordinary intellect, but all the alacrity of spirit, and the social gaiety which had illuminated his happiest days. His friends in this part of the country [Edinburgh] never saw him more full of intellectual vigour and colloquial animation-never more delightful or more instructive, than in his last visit to Scotland in 1817.” See the Notice by Lord Jeffrey, given in the Appendix. To show still more particularly the nature of Mr. Watt's feelings on the occasion in question, we add the following extracts from two of his private letters in our possession. They were addressed to his cousin, the late Robert Muirheid, Esq. of Croy-Leckie, with whom Mr. Watt maintained a constant and affectionate correspondence. have been without its effect; but there is no need for having recourse to extraordinary causes, when we read in a letter, dated so far back as 1783, written by Watt to his friend Dr. Black :-" For my own part, I have little ambition, or desire to HEATHFIELD, January 26th, 1805. "I perhaps have said too much to you and Mrs. Campbell on the state of my mind. I therefore think it necessary to say that I am not low spirited, and were you here you would find me as cheerful in the company of my friends as usual; my feelings for the loss of poor Gregory are not passion, but a deep regret that such was his and my lot. "I know that all men must die, and I submit to the decrees of Nature, I hope with due reverence to the Disposer of events. Yet one stimulus to exertion is taken away, and somehow or other I have lost my relish for my usual avocations. Perhaps time may remedy that, in some measure; meanwhile, I do not neglect the means of amusement which are in my power." * HEATHFIELD, April 8th, 1805. "It is rather mortifying to see how easily the want of even the best of us is dispensed with in the world, but it is very well it should be so. We here, however, cannot help feeling a terrible blank in our family. When I look at my son's books, his writings, and drawings, I always say to myself, where are the mind that conceived these things, and the hands that executed them? In the course of nature, he should have said so of mine; but it was otherwise ordered, and our sorrow is unavailing. As Catullus says, "Nunc it per iter tenebricosum, "But Catullus was a heathen; let us hope that he (G.) is now rejoicing in another and a better world, free from our cares, griefs, and infirmities. Some one has said, I shall not wholly die; and Gregory's name, his merits, and virtues, will live at least as long as those do who knew him. You are not from this to conceive that we give way to grief; on the contrary, you will find us as cheerful as we ought to be, and as much disposed to enjoy the friends we have left as ever; but we should approach to brutes if we had no regrets." Mr. Watt, at the date of these letters, had entered on his seventieth year, a period after which great mental exertions are rarely made.-Tr. publish any of the experiments I have made;" when we find, elsewhere, these words, truly remarkable as coming from a man who has filled the world with his fame, "I know only two pleasures, idleness and sleep." These slumbers, it need hardly be observed, were very light. I may add, that the least excitement was sufficient to rouse Watt from his favourite indolence. Every object that was presented to his notice, gradually received in his imagination changes of form and construction, of such a kind as to render them susceptible of important applications. Those conceptions were, in many cases, for want of an occasion to call them out, lost to the world. The following anecdote will explain my meaning. A company had erected at Glasgow, on the right bank of the Clyde, large buildings and powerful engines, for bringing water into all the houses in the town. When this labour was completed, it was found that there existed near the opposite bank, a spring, or rather a sort of natural filter, which supplied water of evidently better quality. To change the site of the establishment was never even proposed; so they thought of laying, across the bottom of the river, an inflexible suction-pipe, the mouth of which was meant always to lie in the clear water; but it seemed that the construction of a flooring, fitted to support such a pipe, on a muddy and shifting bed, full of inequalities, and always covered with water to a depth of several feet, must require too great an outlay. Watt was consulted, and his answer was given in an instant. Some days previously, seeing a lobster on the table, he had tried and found out how mechanical art could, of iron, make a machine with joints, which should have all the flexibility of the tail of the shell-fish. It was, then, an articulated suctionpipe, capable of accommodating itself to all the actual and possible bendings of the bed of the river, that he proposed; just an iron lobster's tail, two English feet in diameter, and a thousand feet in length; which, after the plans and drawings of Watt, the Glasgow company got executed with complete success. Those who had the happiness of being personally acquainted with our fellow-member, have no hesitation in affirming, that his merits as a philosopher were even exceeded by the good qualities of his heart. A child-like candour, the greatest simplicity of manners, a love of justice carried even to an extreme, an unwearied benevolence,—these have left remembrances in Scotland and England that can never be effaced. Watt, of a disposition so placid, so gentle, became ruffled whenever, in his presence, an invention was not attributed to its real author; and, above all, when any base flatterer endeavoured to enrich him at the expense of others. In his eyes, scientific discoveries were the greatest of blessings. He willingly gave whole hours to discussion, if the ob * An account of this flexible water-pipe, accompanied by an engraving from the drawing sent by Mr. Watt, was communicated by Sir John Robison to the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal in 1820. See vol. iii. p. 60.-TR. + For a vivid and pleasing portraiture of these characteristics of Mr. Watt's mind, see the eloquent speech by Lord Brougham, given in the Appendix.-TR. |