especially Dr. Priestley, whose house and library they destroyed and were busily engaged in plundering the house of Dr. Withering when the military arrived. Watt was included in the proscription, and, apprehending an attack upon his house, he had the Soho workmen armed for Mr. Boulton's defence and his own. Though our principles,' said he, writing to his friend De Luc, are well known, as friends to the established government and enemies to republican principles, and should have been our protection from a mob whose watchword was "Church and King," yet cur safety was principally owing to most of the Dissenters living on the south of the town; for after the first moments they did not seem over nice in their discrimination of religion or principles. I, among others, was pointed out as a Presbyterian, though I never was in a meeting-house in Birmingham, and Mr. Boulton is well known as a Churchman. We had everything most portable packed up, fearing the worst; however, all is well with us.' The circumstance is worth recording, not only as an incident in the life of Watt, but as a specimen of the insane and ignorant ideas which animate mobs.

Notwithstanding that Watt was all his life a consistent Tory, persons, who should have been better informed than the rabble of Birmingham, have sometimes affirmed that he was ‘a sad radical;' and in a work published in the present year, it is even related that he was hanged for treason. For the last assertion we are altogether unable to account, but the report of the radicalism of the great inventor was, no doubt, as Mr. Muirhead conjectures, derived from the circumstance that his son was in Paris at the outbreak of the French Revolution, and with the unsuspicious ardour of youth made himself, in conjunction with the poet Wordsworth, conspicuous in animating the populace. But the younger Watt was soon cured of his republican frenzy, and ended in adopting the steady Toryism of his father. We both began life as ardent and thoughtless radicals,' said Wordsworth to Mr. Muirhead, speaking of his companionship with Watt in Paris, 'but we have both become in the course of our lives, as all sensible men, I think, have done, good, sober-minded Conservatives.'

Watt's later years were years of comparative peace, but of bereavement. One by one his early friends dropped away; the pride and hope of his heart, his son Gregory, died also; and the old man was left almost alone. Fragile though his frame had been through life, he survived the most robust among his associates. Roebuck, Boulton, Darwin, and Withering went before him, as well as his dear friends Robison and Black. Black had watched to the last with tender interest the advancing reputation and prosperity of his protégé. When Robison returned from London

London and told him of the issue of Watt's suit with Hornblower for the protection of his patent right, the kind old Doctor was delighted even to tears. It's very foolish,' he exclaimed, but I can't help it when I hear of anything good to Jamie Watt.' Watt in his turn said of Black, To him I owe in great measure my being what I am; he taught me to reason and experiment in Natural Philosophy.' Dr. Black expired so peacefully that his servant, in describing his death, said that he had given over living,' having departed with a basin of milk upon his knee, which remained unspilled. We may all pray,' was the comment of Watt, 'that our latter end may be like his; he has truly gone to sleep in the arms of his Creator.'

6

Towards the close of his life Watt was distressed by the apprehension that his mental faculties were deserting him, and remarked to Dr. Darwin, 'Of all the evils of age, the loss of the few mental faculties one possessed in youth is the most grievous.' To test his memory, he again commenced the study of German, which he had allowed himself to forget; and speedily acquired such proficiency as enabled him to read the language with comparative ease. But he gave stronger evidence of the integrity of his powers. When, in his seventy-fifth year, he was consulted by a company at Glasgow as to the mode of conveying water from a peninsula across the Clyde to the Company's engines at Dalmarnock-a difficulty which appeared to them almost insurmountable-the plan suggested by Watt proved that his remarkable ingenuity remained unimpaired by age. It was necessary to fit the pipes through which the water passed to the uneven and shifting bed of the river, and Watt, taking the tail of the lobster for his model, forwarded a plan of a tube of iron similarly articulated, which was executed and laid down with complete success.

A few years later, when close upon his eightieth year, the aged mechanician formed one of a party assembled in Edinburgh, at which Sir Walter Scott was present. He delighted the northern literati with his kindly cheerfulness, not less than he astonished them by the extent and profundity of his information. The alert, kind, benevolent old man,' says Scott, had his attention alive to every one's question, his information at every one's command. His talents and fancy overflowed on every subject. One gentleman was a deep philologist-he talked with him on the origin of the alphabet, as if he had been coeval with Cadmus ; another, a celebrated critic-you would have said the old man had studied political economy and belles-lettres all his life; of science it is unnecessary to speak-it was his own distinguished walk.' The vast extent of his knowledge was

remarked

remarked by all who came in contact with him. It seemed,' says Jeffrey, as if every subject that was casually started had been that which he had been occupied in studying.' Yet though no man was more ready to communicate knowledge, none could be less ambitious of displaying it. He was,' says Mrs. Schimmel-Penninck, in the vivid portrait she has drawn of him in her Autobiography, one of the most complete specimens of the melancholic temperament. His head was generally bent forward or leaning on his hand in meditation, his shoulders stooping and his chest falling in, his limbs lank and unmuscular, and his complexion sallow. His utterance was slow and unimpassioned, deep and low in tone, with a broad Scottish accent; his manners gentle, modest, and unassuming. In a company where he was not known, unless spoken to, he might have tranquilly passed the whole time in pursuing his own meditations. When he entered a room men of letters, men of science, nay, military men, artists, ladies, even little children thronged round him. I remember a celebrated Swedish artist having been instructed by him that rats' whiskers make the most pliant painting-brushes; ladies would appeal to him on the best means of devising grates, curing smoking chimneys, warming their houses, and obtaining fast colours. I can speak from experience of his teaching me how to make a dulcimer and improve a Jew's harp.' What Jeffrey said of the steam-engine may be applied to the conversation of its parentthat like the trunk of an elephant it could pick up a pin or rend an oak.

Watt returned to his little workshop at Heathfield, to proceed with the completion of his diminishing machine for copying busts and statues. His habit was, immediately on rising, to answer all letters requiring attention; then, after breakfast, to proceed into the workshop adjoining his bedroom, attired in his woollen surtout, his leather apron, and the rustic hat which he had worn some forty years, and there go on with his machine. He succeeded with it so far as to produce specimens of its performances, which he distributed amongst his friends, jocularly describing them as the productions of a young artist just entering into his eighty-third year.' But the hand of the workman was stopped by death. The machine remained unfinished, and what is a singular testimony to the skill and perseverance of a man who had invented so much, it is almost his only unfinished work.

He was fully conscious of his approaching end, and expressed from time to time his sincere gratitude to Divine Providence for the blessings which he had been permitted to enjoy, for his length of days, and his exemption from the infirmities of age. I am

very sensible,' said he to the mourning friends who assembled round his death-bed, of the attachment you show me, and I hasten to thank you for it, as I am now come to my last illness.' He passed quietly away from the world, on the 19th of August, 1819, in his eighty-third year. A statue by Chantrey-perhaps the greatest work of that master-has been placed in Handsworth Church, where Watt lies buried, and justifies the compliment paid to the sculptor, that he cut breath;' for when uncovered before the old servants assembled round it at Soho, it so powerfully reminded them of their master, that they lifted up their voices and wept.' Watt has been fortunate in his monumental honours. The colossal statue in Westminster Abbey, also from the chisel of Chantrey, bears upon it an epitaph from the pen of Brougham, which is beyond all comparison the finest lapidary inscription in the English language, and among its other signal merits has one which appertains rather to its subject than its author, that, lofty as is the eulogy, every word of it is strictly true.

ART. V.-Lectures on Roman Husbandry, delivered before the University of Oxford. By Charles Daubeny, M.D., Professor of Botany. Oxford. 1857.

WE not say that which she has recently made with the

E need not say that Oxford has our cordial good wishes in

view of attracting within the circle of her training the greatest possible proportion of the youth of England. We bid good speed to the new studies of the place. Fashion is imperiousthere is a demand for a little of everything; and the demand must be met-within due reason. If by offering to teach Pinnock as well as Plato, the benefits of an University education can be made more widely available, then by all means teach Pinnock. Only this much, we think, should be borne in mind, that as an University ought not only to teach us what we want to learn, but to teach us what we ought to learn, we must be careful not to put Pinnock on a level with Plato.

While, however, experience is proceeding to indicate how far the new cycle of ologies is able to compete with the old classical training in the production of men duly qualified to serve God in Church and State, it is interesting to see how naturally, under the influence of the genius loci, modern science strives to identify herself with the spirit of the ancient Muses that have kept watch so many centuries by the banks of the Isis. Rhedycina cannot part with her traditions of Greek and Latin lore.

Like Anacreon's harp, which touched for heroic measures could render no notes but those of love-or like the Ratcatcher's Daughter, whose lips, designed to cry 'Sprats!' could only utter 'Sand!'-the modern Professor of Botany and Rural Economy, instead of discussing the analyses of Liebig and the farming of the Lothians-conscious perhaps that these things are better learned in a farmhouse than in Alma Mater's cloisters-glides away to the husbandry associated with Virgil's page and Cato's life, until those who sought his lectures on the hardest maxims of utilitarianism, remain to dwell on the deep majestic melody of the great Shepherd of the Mantuan plains.'

Not, however, that Professor Daubeny is in any degree false to his mistress Botany. He would vindicate her right to every stamen and pistil within her reign. He does not indeed say that a primrose by a river's brim is nothing more than a yellow primrose; but he does maintain stoutly that it is a yellow primrose in the first place, belonging to that -andria and this -gynia, and if it is anything more he leaves it to the reader to make it out. In a word, drawn as he is by Oxonian instincts to imaginative ground, he insists on dealing with the facts of his case, and suffering the imaginative aspect to develop itself spontaneously. Hence he has more to say about Columella than Virgil, more about Dioscorides than Theocritus.

This suggestive character in the Professor's volume constitutes to our thinking the great charm of it. He gives us as much of the material features of the scene as his botanical and agricultural researches have enabled him to realize, and we can thus shut our eyes and people it with those grand old Republicans of times long passed away. He describes to us the plough, and we will picture for ourselves Cincinnatus behind it. We will go to him to learn about the arbutus, and we shall know where to look for Horace watching from Lucretilis' hill the browsing goats as they search out those favourite berries in the underwood. So in some future university of New Zealand, some future botanical professor may dilate on the classification of bellis perennis, and some future student of Scottish descent may dream of Burns bending over the wee modest crimson-tipped flower.' While therefore we heartily testify to the varied learning which Professor Daubeny has brought to his subject, and to the agreeable and popular manner in which he has detailed the result of his investigations, we have no intention of following him through the specific topics which he has taken in hand. Otherwise we might be disposed to join issue with him on some of his notions. The Roman flora is a rather intricate subject, and any translation connected with it must be coupled with a consider

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