graph went the rounds of the provincial press, stat- | out which, in fact, we question if any material proing that a sermon had been preached before him (in allusion to his church patronage) from the text, There is a lad here which hath five barley loaves," &c. Of course, this was but a new dress put upon the old anecdote, that Archdeacon Paley had preached from this text, at Cambridge, before Pitt, the youthful Premier; and although this anecdote has gained admittance into jest-books, yet we have Paley's authority for saying that its true version is, that he had only said that if he had been called upon to preach before Pitt, and if he had thereupon chosen that particular text, it might not have been inappropriate. It was only the other day, too, that provincial newspapers, in their "Facetia" corner, assured us that "the pulpit of a church in Scotland being vacant," two candidates, named Adam and Low, applied for it; the latter preaching in the morning from the text, "Adam, where art thou?" and the former replying, in the afternoon, with the text, "Lo! here am I!" and thereby "gaining the appointment from the impromptu." But in the "Scripserapologia" of Collins (author of the song "To-morrow "), published in 1804, are some verses on this very subject, changing the scene to the diocese of Salisbury, in the days of "old Sherlock," who entertains the candidates, "two curates," at his own bounteous table.

There is an anecdote told of Sir James Thornhill's preservation from falling from a scaffold when painting the dome of St. Paul's, or, according to another version, Greenwich Hospital; but a similar anecdote is told of a Romanist painter, one Daniel Assam, with the characteristic addition that the figure of the saint, on which he was painting, stretched forth its arm and held him up until assistance arrived. Mr. Roebuck, in a speech at Salisbury, in 1862, asserted, that when he told to "a shrewd, clever" Hampshire laborer that the Duke of Wellington was dead, the man replied, "Ah, sir! I be very sorry for he; but who was he?" and this anecdote was especially dwelt upon in an article shortly afterwards in the Cornhill Magazine; the writer deducing from it that the Hampshire laborer was a true gentleman in being above the meanness of pretending to know a thing of which he was ignorant. And this brings us back to that Cornhill point from which we started on our exploration into the paternity of anecdotes. Therefore, not to be tedious in adducing more examples, we will content ourselves by saying that this conversation between Mr. Roebuck and the Hampshire laborer wonderfully resembles an anecdote that is to be found in most jest-books, touching an old lady, "in a retired village in the West of England," who, when it was told her that Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, was dead, exclaimed, "Is a', is a'? the King o' Prussia! and who may he be?"

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun; and from the sway of this axiom, anecdotes and their paternity are not exempt.

BOULTON AND WATT.

gress at all of importance could have been made, and the ages, materially speaking, would have gone on stagnating as they did of old. The time was, indeed, just ripe for the invention. The Newcomen engines then at work in Cornwall consumed so much coal that it was very questionable whether horse-power was not cheaper. The two engines of Wheal Rose and Wheal Busy, of sixty-six and seventy-two inches in diameter, consumed each about thirteen tons of coal a day. This would have been of no consequence in a coal district, but the expense of land and water carriage to the Cornish mines was so great that the proprietors were very nearly in a state of insolvency, and the mines themselves were on the point of being drowned out. At this critical moment the demand for an engine that economized fuel was answered theoretically by the discovery of the separate condenser, which abolished the great waste of heat caused by the injection of cold water into the cylinder at every stroke. But great inventions are not so speedily put in practice. Although Watt hit upon the idea of the separate condenser in 1765, and in two or three days worked out in his mind the leading points of the modern steam-engine, yet it was not until the end of 1774 that his first model was brought to work satisfactorily. He had, indeed, conquered nature by "finding out her weak side," but the practical means necessary to put his ideas in force were scarcely obtainable.

His con

The machine tools of the present day were not in existence; he could not even obtain a cylinder that was true in the bore, and his bitter lament over the decease of his "white-iron man" gives a measure of the mechanical aptitude of the period. Again, the financial difficulty was almost as great a difficulty to conquer as the mechanical one. nection with Dr. Roebuck soon after his discovery of the separate condenser was very nearly proving fatal to the idea; and it was not until Mr. Boulton, of the Soho works, was induced to take Roebuck's two thirds share of the patent of 1769 as a bad debt that the practical application of the ingenious labors of Watt can be said to have commenced. It has been happily said, that without Boulton there would have been no Watt. That "the damned engine would have slept in quiet," as Watt expressed it, when writing one of his dolorous letters to Dr. Black, and but too soundly, for an indefinite time, unless the princely Boulton, with his untiring energy, foresight, and cheerful spirit, had come to the rescue, there can be little doubt. Mr. Smiles has, therefore, done wisely to link their two names together in the volume before us. The more we read of the correspondence between the two great men during the birth of the new motive power, the more we feel convinced that the world has to be thankful for their happy partnership. Boulton seemed by some happy chance to possess all the qualities of mind that were wanting in Watt.

Mr. Smiles gives a most exciting picture of the first introduction of the new engine into Cornwall. The very life of the mining interest depended upon its success. Lest there should be any mischance in the setting up of the first engines ordered, Watt himself proceeded to the spot to superintend their erection. The great trial was to be made at Chacewater, and upon the success of this experiment the

In the calendars of every industrial nation should be noted the happy Sunday when Watt, in his quiet stroll across Glasgow-green, conceived the fruitful idea of the separate condenser for the "fire-engine." That moment he received as by inspiration the thought which was destined to advance the human race a thousand years in its onward course, -with-Biography," "Self-Help," &c.

* Lives of Boulton and Watt, principally from the Original Soho MSS.; comprising also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the Steam-Engine. By SAMUEL SMILES, Author of "Industrial

chance of superseding all the old pumping engines | new-born Hercules, although Watt, strangely enough, depended. As might have been supposed, all the did not seem to see it. By the year 1780 there was adventurers were in attendance, when the engine but one Newcomen engine pumping in the district, was set in motion, and all the engineers of the old and Boulton urged him to prepare his invention Newcomen engines were there to sneer and predict for the more general work of the country,-corn its failure. But it was to be a great success. "It grinding, metal rolling, and the thousand purposes made eleven eight-feet strokes per minute, and it to which the new labor-saving machine was applicaworked with greater power, went more steadily, and ble. But to fit it for its new labors the rotative 'forked' more water than any of the ordinary en- arrangement had to be perfected. The Cornish gines, with only about one third the consumption of pumping action did not need the transmutation of coal." But, strange to say, the smooth working of a perpendicular to a circular motion, but this had the engine, which was the true test of its perfection, now to be accomplished. Watt had at an early was its fault, in the eyes of the gaping crowd col- date used the crank for this purpose, but had failed lected to look at the performance of the new won- to patent the application of this simple invention, der. Watt, writing to his partner, describing the and while the model of the new engine was being manner of its working, says, "The velocity, vio- constructed at Soho, one of his workmen, tattling lence, magnitude, and the horrible noise of the about it at a public house, was overheard by a engine give universal satisfaction to all beholders, stranger present, who immediately posted to Lonbelievers or not." They seemed to look upon it as don and patented the idea. The patent was taken some wild beast that was expected to roar as part of out by a man named Pickard, a Birmingham butthe entertainment, and upon Watt attempting to ton-maker, but Mathew Washborough, of Bristol, trim the engine to work a little more quietly, the was the first to apply it to the steam-engine. Watt engineer of the mine was quite disconcerted. was greatly incensed at this piracy, but in fact The success of Chacewater, however, was the Washborough had quite as much right to use it as commencement of poor Watt's troubles; other any one else, and that he was a very ingenious mepumping-engines for the various mines were imme-chanic there can be little doubt, as he was the first diately ordered, and he was of course obliged to be to adopt the fly-wheel which Watt after deriding present and superintend their erection, riding about finally adopted. Watt disdained to dispute the the country with his wife behind him on a pillion. patent, so he set to work to solve the difficulty in Watt could engineer materials, but he could not another manner, and he invented five different engineer men, and his account of the Cornish men methods of securing a rotative motion. The models of the day was certainly not flattering. Their of these inventions are still hanging up in Watt's rough, not to say brutal nature, gave a shock to the old workshop in the garret at Heathfield. Watt at retiring and undemonstrative nature of Watt, and the time of the piracy was very sore about the he was perpetually writing to Boulton to come down matter, and we are told that when Dick Cartwright, and take the business arrangements with the miners the pattern-maker, who so indiscreetly divulged the off his hands. Whilst, however, Watt was pumping secret, was hung for some other matter, he was out the almost submerged Cornish mines, poor Boul- somewhat comforted. ton was on the very verge of financial ruin at Soho. The expense he had been at in perfecting the engine, together with the difficulties of the time, pressed him to the earth; he was obliged to sell the estate his wife had brought him, to borrow from his friends, and even to run about to borrow money to pay his workmen on the Saturday night. Yet the brave old man kept a bright face, and in answer to the doleful letters of his partner, ventured to re-inventions to produce circular motion for that of prove him after the following gentle fashion for William Murdock, termed "the sun and planet mothinking only of himself. "I am obliged," he tion," an arrangement which may be seen in the wrote, "to smile, to laugh, to be good-humored, "old Bess engine," now in the South Kensington sometimes to be merry, and even to go to the play! Museum, which is a venerable relic of the Soho O that I were at the Land's End!" There is factory, where it commenced work in 1779, being something so cheery in the tone of this noble old the very first constructed by Watt on the expansion man that it is really imparted to the reader, even at principle. It was the great show engine in the last this distance of time, when reading his correspond-century, and was at work in that establishment until ence. The difference between the two men is a few years ago, when it was removed to its present shown in their letters in the most marked manner. resting-place. The completion of the rotative enIt was clear that every one loved Boulton; but gine which placed the whole industry of the country Watt, with his perpetual headache, his sorrowful at the feet of the firm, should have given Watt ungrumbling, and his cold manner, was respected, but bounded satisfaction; but it seemed, on the contranothing more. In Cornwall he was clearly the ry, to annoy him. So far from using any effort to right man in the wrong place, and when he was push them in the market, that was "steam-mill succeeded by the right-hand man of the firm, Wil-mad," he actually attempted to dissuade Boulton liam Murdock, all things went right. from taking any orders for them in Manchester, as he thought that they would not be able to compete with the powerful streams in the North of England. Watt seemed to be entirely wanting in the foresight which so eminently distinguished his partner, who in this matter wisely ignored his advice. We are told that the first rotative engine was erected for Mr. Reynolds, at Ketley, in 1782, and was used to drive a corn-mill, and the third engine is still work

But there was a change of measures as well as of men. Murdock, instead of shrinking from the engineers and the stokers when they would have bullied him, picked out the biggest, gave him a sound thrashing in the engine-house, and was the sworn friend of the rest for the remainder of his stay in the country. But the territory of Cornwall, after all, was but a small field for the labors of the

It is certainly a singular proof either of the want of wit, or of the jealousy of rival engineers, that when the question of employing the steam-engine for the grinding of corn in the Deptford-yard was submitted by the Navy Board to the celebrated Mr. Smeaton, he should have given it as his opinion that it was not so suitable for the purpose as the old water-wheel. Watt ultimately threw aside his own

ing, though in a modified form, at Messrs. Whit- | which it was asserted had not been opened for about bread's, in this metropolis.

fifty years, gave rise to the rumor that some of its members had actually practised the art at that early date. The plate is still in the possession of Mr. Petitt Smith, of the Patent Office Museum, but there seems to be little doubt it is of modern production. The "Lunatics," as they were called, did not hide their lights under a bushel, as we well know from the dispute among its members as to the question of the discoverer of the composition of water, and not one word with reference to the art is to be found in any of their familiar letters to each other.

One reason, perhaps, why Watt discountenanced seeking orders for rotative engines was because the drawings for them were all furnished by his own hand, and he evidently liked inventing better than plan-making. At the time he was dissuading his partner from taking any more orders, he was perfecting the inventions embodied in his patent of 1784, which included the beautiful parallel motion, of which he said: "Though I am not over anxious after fame, yet I am more proud of the parallel motion than of any other mechanical invention I have ever made." That the very obvious application of As Soho prospered Watt became a changed man, steam power as a moving agent on land and water the racking headaches which disturbed his early should have escaped the attention of Watt must life disappeared, and as the profits of his engine have struck every engineer with astonishment. came in he forgot to curse it. He became more That he made some feeble efforts towards solving cheerful and contented, and we feel assured that it the problem of applying the new agent as a loco- is from this period of his life that his more favormotive power is undoubted; but that he never able social qualities have been drawn by those who crowned his labors with a working model is equal- came in contact with him. We are told that he was ly indisputable; and indeed he seems to have had passionately addicted to novel-reading, and that he some little jealousy of William Murdock's efforts in and his wife cried like children over a touching this direction, as we find him complaining to Boul-novel. To the world, this gives a picture of the ton that Murdock was wasting his time on a fruitless great mechanical genius it could little have exerrand; yet that errand was a more momentous one pected; but to the psychologist, who knows that the (the steam-engine itself excepted) than any other mind delights in sudden contrasts, it will not appear of the last or present century. William Murdock's strange. locomotive model, the first ever constructed, was ex- Upon the dissolution of the original partnership hibited, it will be remembered, at the Exhibition of in 1800, Watt, although only sixty-two, retired from 1851 on the gigantic screw-shaft of the James Watt, the active duties of Soho, but the indomitable ninety-one gun ship, executed just three quarters of a Boulton, who lived in the excitement of business, century afterwards by the firm of the Messrs. Watt. not only remained, but in his old years set about After innumerable difficulties, among which no less a project than the reform of the coinage, may be mentioned the fight the Cornishmen made then in a very low condition. The application of against paying the royalty of one third of the fuel the steam-engine to the presses, and his own love of saved by the new engine, - towards the end of art, enabled him to pursue this new branch of in1787 Watt began to reap the fruits of his inven- dustry with a success in which not only this, but tion; he had £4,000 at his banker's, and a promise other nations participated. It might be said that of further instalments. To the frugal engineer this he died in harness; for although suffering from a was, indeed, wealth. He was relieved of the re- cruel disease, he was as active as ever in his great sponsibility of the debt of the firm to the bankers, establishment at Soho to within a year of his death, and was now in expectation of a rapid fortune, as which occurred in 1809. Watt, towards the latter orders for engines were coming in with great rapid-years of his life, indulged in all the pleasures of beity. It was otherwise with his partner. His specu-ing a landed proprietor; the Englishman's love of lative mind led him into profitless undertakings, adding acre to acre seized him, but he still remained many of which were entered into for the purpose mainly of forwarding the interests of the steam-engine branch of the business, such, for instance, as the famous Albion Mill Association; but the burden of these failures fell upon him, and he became seriously involved. It was his turn now to seek assistance from the partner he had for years sustained; but Watt, when called upon, "had remitted all his money to Scotland." There can be no doubt that Boulton felt Watt's closeness, and there is a tone of bitterness in his letters to a mutual friend on the subject, which indicates that he felt his partner knew how to take care of himself. Boulton, in fact, had acted with the greatest generosity to him with respect to the partnership arrangements, as he had agreed to give up the original contract by which two thirds of the profits of the engine were secured to him, and to be satisfied with an equal division.

The connection of the partners with the famous Lunar Society, which is briefly touched upon by Mr. Smiles, brings us to a matter which has created some curiosity, among scientific persons at the present time. It has been suggested that the question of photography was a matter of discussion at the monthly meetings of the society, and the discovery of a photograph in Mr. Boulton's library at Soho,

true to his old instincts. Upon his retirement to Heathfield in the neighborhood of Birmingham, he fitted up a room next his bedroom as a workshop, where he fought over again the battle of his life. In this retirement he occupied himself with many curious inventions, among the best known of which was the famous copying machine. With this ingenious instrument, which reproduces with mathematical accuracy pieces of sculpture, &c., he amused himself almost up to the day of his death.

Singularly enough, this contrivance, which he applied to one of the most elevated of the fine arts, our neighbors across the Atlantic have twisted to the deadly trade of war. The only practical use, in fact, to which the machine is now put being the manufacture of gunstocks in the arsenal of Springfield, United States, and in our own government establishment at Enfield. Watt lived in this little garret, and it was fitted up with appliances for cooking his meals. The great inventor, who may be said to have moved the world, would seem to have lived in a wholesome fear of his wife, who detested dirt, and hated the sight of his leathern apron and soiled hands, and he was obliged to go through a cleansing process before he dared to enter her apartments. If we are to believe Mrs. Schemmel

of the case he could not have been. How he had got there he had no conception; and it seemed quite certain that he had not been carried or in any way helped there. His nervous system was so completethrown out of gearing that he never recovered from the shock.

penninck, she treated him as she did her pug dog,
whom she forced to wipe his feet upon the mat be-
fore venturing to cross the hall. No wonder that
he stuck to his garret. It is, we believe, in contem-
plation to take accurate photographs of this sanctu-ly
ary, hallowed by so many associations, and by their
aid to remove the entire fittings of the room, to-
gether with their contents, as they now stand, and
as Watt left them, to the Museum of the Patent
Office, where, indeed, the model engine constructed
by himself, and used for the purpose of turning his
lathe, is now to be found.

It can scarcely be doubted that had death come upon him in any form whatever during the interval which elapsed between his leaving the carriage and his finding himself quietly seated on the cutting, many yards away from the ruined train, he would have met it without conscious suffering. And, without going through such a hazardous ordeal as this, large numbers of persons have had experience which

As Mr. Smiles has long since conquered the field of industrial biography, our commendation of this interesting volume will be almost needless. Never-points in the same direction. theless we cannot but congratulate him upon the interesting picture he has given us of the public life of the two men who have been instrumental in giving to the world its great moving power. From the heaps of dusty ledgers in the counting-house of Soho he has drawn the materials for these deeply-interesting lives, and has so handled them as to produce a volume which most worthily crowns his efforts in this most interesting because before untrodden walk in literature.

A COMFORTABLE DOCTRINE. WHEN Dr. Livingstone was sleeping out one night, in the course of his explorations, a lion seized and shook him, with a view to further proceedings. It is not many men who can say with Miss Pecksniff that they have "lived to be shook" in such a style as this. The Doctor records it as his experience that the result of this shaking was to superinduce a sort of comatose state, a feeling half of numbness, half of contented repose, in which he disregarded pain, and had no considerable dread of the tearing of flesh and limbs which was to precede his death. Thereupon he suggests the idea that perhaps the practice of shaking their prey which is observed in all feline animals, as well as in dogs and in some of the more violent fishes, is a Providential arrangement to spare the necessary victim pain.

A man who is a bad sailor, and has crossed the Channel in really dirty weather, sitting on the deck, knows what it is to be suddenly lifted as it were from his seat by some strange power, such as that which carried the prince and princess in the Arabian Nights backwards and forwards through the air, and deposited ever so far off in a heap, among ruinous débris of umbrella and cloak, and other impediment of a sick passenger on a stormy day. At the moment of his deposit, and for some moments after, no imminence of death in any form could have much effect in rousing him even to a struggle to evade it. And much the same result follows sometimes from what the Irish call a gentle tap on the head; so that in many very horrible accidents resulting in prolonged "agonies of death," which make every nerve of one's body quiver at the bare recital, there are great chances in favor of the victim's having received just some preparatory jerk, or shock, or blow which paralyzes that part of his system to whose sensitiveness pain is due, and so render him unable to feel the lengthened pangs.

And this may very well hold in the case of those who struggle on and cry aloud in their apparent torture, even as the "subject" under the surgeon's knife makes signs of pain when his nerves are under the blessed influence of anæsthetics.

It is a comfort to think of such things in these days, when steam locomotion and steam machinery If we look into tales of death by violence, we shall bring to so many households the horrors of a dreadsee in very many cases some such preparation for a ful death to enhance the usual sorrow for death. comparatively easy death, easy, that is to say, as And, in face of the terrible catastrophe in the Bay compared with the horror which the account excites of Biscay, it is a great comfort to think that a simiin those who hear or read of them. This would ap- lar effect is often produced, though perhaps not to pear to be notably the case in some kinds of railway so high a degree, by fatigue, by exposure to wet and accident. The shock and jar of a collision has some-cold, by prolonged and anxious doubt. Sea-sickthing peculiarly numbing about it. Passengers who escape unhurt from such a catastrophe relate that they suddenly became conscious of something happening or being about to happen, and knew nothing more till they found themselves faced round the other way, or heels uppermost, or contorted in some of the many strange ways in which the human body is found to be contorted after accidents of this kind. There has been no blow to account for a loss of consciousness; there is no bruise to show, no outward injury done, and yet locomotion of a very complicated and difficult nature has been achieved, and a space of time has passed which cannot by any means be called instantaneous, for it has sufficed for the crash and tumult of the collision to come to an end, and the transported passenger finds himself settled and stationary. A Scotch physician who was in a bad railway accident some years ago discovered himself sitting at the top of the cutting in which the accident occurred, externally unhurt, as if he could not have been thrown there; indeed, from the nature

ness has especially and to a very high degree this effect. A man under its influence will constantly say, "Do with me what you will." If he were to fall overboard, he is sure he should make no effort to save himself. If he is told that the ship is sinking, the announcement has but little interest for him. In that storm in which the London went down, long before a tenth part of the passengers could have become accustomed to the motion of the vessel, we may be sure that there were many whose ordinary sufferings rendered it impossible for them to have that keen perception of the horrors of the situation which each fresh detail brings to us on land. And of the rest large numbers must have been tired into resignation, tired by the efforts at self-preservation and the preservation of others they had so spiritedly and so nobly made, tired by exertions the very intentness of which precluded the possibility of much agony of anticipation while such exertions lasted. Many again of those whose sex or age or infirmities forced them to be somewhat in