meeting-something about steam. All the while Mr. Watt kept looking at the fire, and laid down the cistern at the foot of his chair. At last he looked at me, and said briskly: "You need not fash yourself any more about that, man; I have now made an engine that shall not waste a particle of steam. It shall all be boiling hot: ay, and hot water injected, if you please." So saying, Mr. Watt looked with complacency at the little thing at his feet, and, seeing that I observed him, he shoved it away under a table with his foot. I put a question about the nature of his contrivance. He answered me rather dryly. I did not press him to a further explanation.

I found Mr. Alexander Brown, a very intimate acquaintance of Mr. Watt's, and he immediately accosted me with: "Well, have you seen Jamie Watt?" Yes." 'He'll be in high spirits now with his engine, isn't he?" "Yes," said I, very fine spirits." "Ay," says Mr. Brown," the condenser's the thing; keep it but cold enough, and you may have a perfect vacuum, whatever be the heat of the cylinder." The instant he said this, the whole flashed on my mind at once.'

The first experiment was made with a common anatomist's great injection syringe for a cylinder, but the corivance was perfect in Watt's mind, and fitted the engine at once for the greatest and most powerful, or for the most trifling task. Dr. Robison says he is satisfied that when he left town a fortnight before the interview above quoted, Watt had not thought of the method of keeping the cylinder hot, and that when he returned, he had completed it, and confirmed it by experiment. Sir Walter Scott, according to Lockhart, never considered any amount of literary distinction as entitled to be spoken of in the same breath with mastery in the higher departments of practical life; and if ever a discovery in science was entitled to this exalted position, it was surely that made by James Watt-an invention which is estimated to have added to the available labour of Great Britain alone a power equivalent to that of four hundred millions of men, or more than double the number of males supposed to inhabit the globe.

To reap the benefits of his discovery was now the great object to which Watt directed himself; but it was eight or nine years before it turned to the advantage of the public or to the benefit of the inventor. For a time he was associated with an ingenious but unsuccessful man, Dr. Roebuck, and neither profited much by the connection. The invention was, however, patented in January 1769, and Watt continued to experiment upon and to perfect the mechanism of his fire-engine.' He had married a cousin of his own, Miss Miller, in July 1753, and had now three children; ‘but unhappily,' says Mr. Muirhead, without receiving that triple proportion of corn which, among the Romans, the jus trium liberorum brought with it. Those little voices," whose crying was a cry for gold," were not to be stilled by the baser metal of a badly cast Carron cylinder, or the "block-tin

and hammered lead” of a Glasgow condenser.' We find Watt writing thus: I am resolved, unless those things I have brought to some perfection reward me for the time and money I have lost on them, if I can resist it, to invent no more. Ind ed, I am not near so capable as I once was. I find that I am not the same person I was four years ago, when I invented the fire-engine, and foresaw, even before 1 made a model, almost every circumstance that has since occurred.'

To carry on the affairs of his household, Watt undertook many occasional commissions. He projected a canal for carrying coals to Glasgow, and received £200 a year for superintending its construction. His mind having been turned to canals, he struck out the idea of the screw-propeller, or ‘spiral oar,' as he called it. He made surveys for various canals in Scotland, and among others, by appointment of the Court of Police of Glasgow, the Caledonian Canal, which was afterwards constructed between Inverness and FortWilliam. Mr. Telford, to whom this great work was principally intrusted, throughout his lengthened labours in connection with it, has borne testimony to the particular correctness and value of Watt's survey. The inventive genius of the man was never still: clocks, micrometers, dividing screws, surveying quadrants, and a hundred other inventions flowed from him with the case that a litterateur dashes off an article for a magazine. You might live,' said his friend Dr. Small, by inventing only an hour in a week for mathematical instrument-makers.'

In 1778, Mr. Watt and Dr. Rocbuck dissolved their connection; and then began the partnership with Mr. Boulton of the Soho Works, in Birmingham, which laid the foundation of Watt's future prosperity. Mr. Boulton was possessed of ample means to do justice to the magnitude of Watt's inventions; and the result was, that both realised an ample fortune, and the Soho Works of Birmingham were among the greatest establishments of that city. Watt's inventions continued to enrich the world almost until his death, at the patriarchal age of eighty-three. Among the most important of these, not mentioned above, were the rotative motion and parallel motion, the throttlevalve, the steam-gauge, the indicator, the governor, &c., in connection with the steam-engine; the copying-press, the steam tilt-hammer, a smoke-consumer, the discovery of the composition of water, &c. These are among the works which we owe to the great inventor and perfecter of the steam-engine. Lord Brougham's beautiful epitaph on Watt, in Westminster Abbey, should never be omitted from any notice of his life and character:

And Commons of the Realm,
Raised this Monument to
JAMES WATT,

Who, directing the force of an original genius,
Early exercised in philosophic research,
To the improvement of
The Steam-engine,

Enlarged the Resources of his Country,
Increased the Power of Man,

And rose to an eminent place

Among the most Illustrious Followers of Science
And the real Benefactors of the World.
Born at Greenock. MDCCXXXVI. ;

Died at Heathfield, in Staffordshire, MDCCCXIX.

The Life of George Stephenson,' by SAMUEL SMILES, 1857, is interesting on account of the history it gives of the application of locomotives to railway travelling; and it is invaluable as affording the example of a great principle triumphing over popular prejudice, ignorance, and the strenuous opposition of vested interests." The railway engineer rose from very small beginnings. He was the son of a labourer in Northumberland, fireman at the pumping-engine of the colliery at Wylam, near Newcastle. George was born in 1781. While a child he ran errands, herded cows, and performed fieldlabour until, in his fourteenth year, he was promoted to be assistant to his father at the rate of one shilling a day. He could not read, but he imitated everything. He mended clocks and watches, made shoes, and otherwise displayed such ingenuity, that he was appointed engine-wright at Killingworth Colliery at a salary of £100 a year. Here he inspired such confidence in his sagacity and skill, that, on application, he at once obtained permission from Lord Ravensworth, the proprietor, to incur the outlay for constructing what he called a * travelling engine' for the tram-roads between the colliery and the shipping-port nine miles off. With the imperfect tools and unskilled workmen at Killingworth, Stephenson constructed his first locomotive. He called it My Lord; and at its first trial, on an ascending gradient of 1 in 450, the engine drew eight loaded carriages, of about thirty tons' weight, at the rate of four miles an hour. This was on the 25th of July, 1814. It was not until 1830 that the public fully recognised the practicability of driving locomotives on smooth rails; and it was then recognised, because the fact could no longer be denied. Stephenson conviced himself of the two great principlesthat friction is a constant quantity at all velocities, and that iron is capable of adhesion upon iron without roughness of surface. He therefore discarded cog-wheels on rails and the idea of running locomotives on common roads, and laboured to adapt the locomotive and the rails to the wants of each other, so that, as he said himself, they might be like man and wife.' His success led to his appointment as engineer of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, a line projected in order to find an outlet and new markets for the Bishop

Auckland coals. Here he succeeded in establishing the first railway over which passengers and goods were carried by a locomotive. The opening trial took place 27th September, 1827, and a local chronicler thus records the event:

Starting the First Railway Locomotive.

The signal being given, the engine started off with this immense train of carriages; and such was its velocity, that in some parts the speed was frequently twelve miles an hour; and at that time the number of passengers was counted to be 450, which, together with the coal, merchandise, and carriages, would amount to near ninety tons The engine with its load arrived at Darlington, a distance of 8 miles, in sixty-five minutes. The six wagons, loaded with coal intended for Darlington, were then left behind; and obtaining a fresh supply of water, and arranging the procession to accommodate a band of music and numerous passengers from Darlington, the engine set off again, and arrived at Stockton in three hours and seven min.tes, including stoppages, the distance being nearly twelve miles. By the time the train reached Stockton there were about 600 persons in the traiu or hanging on to the wagons which must have gone at a safe and steady pace of from four to six miles n hour from Darlington. The arrival at Stockton, it is added, 'excited a deep interest and admiration.'

A more important field was, however, necessary, in order to attract public attention, and to test the inherent soundness of the principle propounded by Stephenson. This was found in Liverpool and Manchester. The means of transporting goods between these great cities had not kept pace with the development of the traffic. Cotton, as Mr. Huskisson observed in the House of Commons, was detained a fortnight at Liverpool, while the Manchester manufacturers were obliged to suspend their labours; and goods manufactured at Manchester for foreign markets could not be transmitted in time, in consequence of the tardy conveyance. In nine years, the quantity of raw cotion alone sent from the one town to the other had increased by fifty million pounds' weight.

A public meeting was held at Liverpool, and it was resolved to construct a tram-road, an idea which, under George Stephenson, was ultimately extended to a railway suitable for either fixed or locomotive engines. At this time the Bridgewater Canal was yielding a return of the whole original investment about once in two years. The opposition of the proprietors was therefore natural enough, but the scheme was opposed on all sides. In making the survey, Stephenson was refused access to the ground at one point, turned off by the gamekeepers at another, and on one occasion, when a clergyman was violently hostile, he had to slip in and make his survey while divine service was going on. The survey was made, however, in spite of all opposition. The next difficulty was to get leave to make the line. A shower of pamphlets warned the public against the locomotive: it would keep cows from grazing, and hens from laying; the air would be poisoned, and birds fall dead as it passed; the preservation of pheasants and foxes would be impossible; householders would be ruined, horses become extinct, and oats unsaleable; country inns would be ruined; travelling rendered dangerous, for boilers

would burst, and passengers be blown to atcms. But there was always this consolation to wind up with-the weight of the locomotive would prevent its moving, and railways could never be worked by steam-power. The bill for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at length came before a committee of the House of Commons. Privately, Mr. Stephenson talked of driving twenty miles an hour; but the council warned him of such folly, and in evidence he restricted himself to ten miles an hour. But assuming this speed,' said a member of the committee, 'suppose that a cow were to stray upon the line and get in the way of the engine; would not that, think you, be a very awkward circumstance?' Yes,' replied the witness, with his strong Northumberland burr, and a merry twinkle in his eye-yes, verry awkward indeed for the coo?'

Mr. Stephenson-that unprofessional person,' as one of the engineers of the day called him-failed to convince the committee, and the bill was lost. 'We must persevere, sir,' was his invariable reply, when friends hinted that he might be wrong; and a second bill was brought in, which, as the new line carefully avoided the lands of a few short-sighted opponents, passed the House of Commons by 88 to 41, and the House of Lords with the opposition of only Lord Derby and Lord Wilton. The railway was commenced; and though told by the first engineers of the day that no man in his senses would attempt to carry it through Chat Moss, Mr. Stephenson did so, at a cost not of £270,000, but of only £28,000, and he completed the ine in a substantial and business-like manner. But the adoption of the locomotive was still an open question, and he stood alone among the engineers of the day. The most advanced professional men concurred in recommending fixed engines. We must persevere, sir,' was still George's motto. He persuaded the directors to give the locomotive a trial, and he made an engine for the purpose. The trial came on, 6th October 1829. The engine started on its journey, dragging after it about thirteen tons' weight in wagons, and made the first ten trips backwards and forwards along the two miles of road, running the thirty-five miles, including stoppages, in an hour and forty-eight minutes. The second ten trips were in like manner performed in two hours and three minutes. The maximum velocity attained by the 'Rocket' during the trial-trip was twenty-nine miles an hour, or about three times the speed that one of the judges of the competition had declared to be the limit of possibility. Now,' cried one of the directors, lifting up his hands-now is George Stephenson at last delivered.' This decided the question; locomotives were immediately constructed and put upon the line; and the public opening of the work took place on the 15th September 1830.

Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

The completion of the work was justly regarded as a great national event, and was celebrated accordingly. The Duke of Wellington, then prime-minister, S Robert Peel, secretary of state, Mr. Huskisson, one of the members for Liverpoo E.L.V.8-4