As happy as a lover; and attired With sudden brightness, like a man inspired; Come when it will, is equal to the need: It is his darling passion to approve; More brave for this, that he hath much to love: 'Tis finally the man, who, lifted high, Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. CLXXIII. JAMES WATT. MR. JAMES WATT, the great improver of the steam-engine, died on the 25th of August, 1819, at his seat of Heathfield, near Birmingham, in the 84th year of his age. This name fortunately needs no com memoration of ours, for he that bore it survived to see it crowned with undisputed and unenvied honors; and many generations will probably pass away, before it shall have gathered all its fame." We have said that Mr. Watt was the great improver of the steamengine; but, in truth, as to all that is admirable in its structure, or vast in its utility, he should rather be described as its inventor. It was by his invention that its action was so regulated, as to make it capable of being applied to the finest and most delicate manufactures, and its power so increased, as to set weight and solidity at defiance. By his admirable contrivances, it has become a thing stupendous alike for its force and its flexibility,-for the prodigious power which it can exert, and the ease and precision, and °ductility, with which it can be varied, distributed, and applied. The trunk of an elephant, that can pick up a pin, or rend an oak, is as nothing to it. It can engrave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate metal before it,-draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer, and lift up a ship of war, like a bauble, in the air. It can embroider muslin, and forge anchors, cut steel into ribands, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and waves. It would be difficult to estimate the value of the benefits which these inventions have conferred upon the country. There is no branch of in'dustry that has not been indebted to them; and, in all the most material, they have not only widened most magnificently the field of its exertions, but multiplied a thousand-fold the amount of its productions. Our improved steam-engine has increased indefinitely the mass of human comforts and enjoyments, and rendered cheap and accessible, all over the world, the materials of wealth and prosperity. It has armed the feeble hand of man, in short, with a power to which no limits can be assigned, completed the dominion of mind over the most refractory qualities of matter, and laid a sure foundation for all those future miracles of mechanic power, which are to aid and reward the labors of after generations. It is to the genius of one man, too, that all this is mainly owing; and certainly no man ever before bestowed such a gift on his kind. The blessing is not only universal, but unbounded; and the fabled inventors of the plough, and the loom, who were deified by the erring gratitude of their rûde contemporaries, conferred less important benefits on mankind, than the inventor of our present steam-engine. Independently of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr. Watt was an extraordinary, and, in many respects, a wonderful man. Perhaps no individual in his age possessed so much, and such varied and exact information,-had read so much, or remembered what he read so accurately and well. That he should have been minutely and extensively skilled in chemistry and the arts, and in most of the branches of physical science, might perhaps have been conjectured; but it could not have been inferred from his usual occupations, and probably is not generally known, that he was curiously learned in many branches of antiquity, metaphysics, medicine, and etymology; and perfectly at home in all the details of architecture, music, and law. He was well acquainted, too, with most of the modern languages, and familiar with their most recent literature. His astonishing memory was aided, no doubt in a great measure, by a still higher and rarer faculty,-by his power of digesting and arranging in its proper place, all the information he received, and of casting aside, and rejecting, as it were instinctively, whatever was worthless or immaterial. He never appeared therefore to be at all encumbered or perplexed with the verbiage of the dull books he perused, or the idle talk to which he listened; but to have at once extracted, by a kind of intellectual alchemy, all that was worthy of attention, and to have reduced it, for his own use, to its true value, and to its simplest form. It is needless to say, that, with those vast resources, his conversation was, at all times, rich and instructive, in no ordinary degree; but it was, if possible, still more pleasing than wise, and had all the charms of familiarity with all the substantial treasures.of knowledge. No man could be more social in his spirit, less assuming or fastidious in his manners, or more kind and indulgent towards all who approached him. He rather liked to talk,-at least in his latter years, but, though he took a considerable share of the conversation, he rarely suggested the topics on which it was to turn, but readily and quietly took up whatever was presented by those around him, and astonished the idle and barren propounders of an ordinary theme, by the treasures which he drew from the mine that unconsciously opened. He generally seemed, indeed, to have no choice or predilection for one subject of discourse rather than another; but allowed his mind, like a great °cyclopædia, to be opened at any letter his associate might choose to turn up, and only endeavored to select, from his inexhaustible stores, what might be best adapted to the taste of his present hearers. As to their capacity, he gave himself no trouble; and, indeed, such was his singular talent for making all things plain, clear, and intelligible, that scarcely any one could be aware of such a deficiency in his presence. His talk, too, though overflowing with information, had no resemblance to lecturing or solemn discoursing, but, on the contrary, was full of colloquial spirit and pleasantry. He had a certain quiet and grave humor, which ran through most of his conversation, and a vein of temperate jocularity, which gave infinite zest and effect to the condensed and inexhaustible information, which formed its main staple and characteristic. There was a little air of affected testiness, and a tone of pretended rebuke and contradiction, with which he used to address his younger friends, that was always felt by them as an endearing mark of his kindness and familiarity, and prized, accordingly, far beyond all the solemn compliments that ever proceeded from the lips of authority. He had in his character, the utmost abhorrence for all sorts of forwardness, parade, and pretensions; and, indeed, never failed to put all such impostures out of countenance, by the manly plainness and honest intrepidity of his language and deportment. In his temper and dispositions, he was not only kind and affectionate, but generous and considerate of the feelings of all around him, and gave the most liberal assistance and encouragement to all young persons who showed any indications of talent, or applied to him for patronage or advice. 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. But a short time before his death he applied himself, with all the ardor of early life, to the invention of a machine for mechanically copying all sorts of sculpture and statuary-and distributed among his friends some of its earliest performances, as the productions of a young artist, just entering on his eighty-third year. This happy and useful life came at last to a gentle close. He had suffered some inconvenience through the summer, but was not seriously indisposed till within a few weeks from his death. He then became perfectly aware of the event which was approaching: and, with his usual tranquillity and benevolence of nature, seemed only anxious to point out, to the friends around him, the many sources of consolation which were afforded by the circumstances under which it was about to take place. He expressed his sincere gratitude to Providence for the length of days with which he had been blessed, and his exemption from most of the infirmities of age, as well as for the calm and cheerful evening of life that he had been permitted to enjoy, after the honorable labors of the day had been concluded. And thus, full of years and honors, in all calmness and tranquillity, he yielded up his soul, without a pang or struggle,—and passed from the bosom of his family to that of his God. LORD JEFFREY. CLXXIV.-BURIAL OF AN EMIGRANT'S CHILD IN THE FOREST. AGNES. SURELY 'tis all a dream-a fever dream! The desolation and the agony— The strange red sunrise-and the gloomy woods, So terrible with their dark giant boughs, And my boy's voice will wake me, with its clear, Speak to thy mother, bright one! she hath watched Is darkened by swift waves of fantasies, (Shuddering) The strange, damp, thrilling touch! To journey on without the blessed light In his deep, loving eyes-he's gone-he's gone! [Her husband enters.j Hus. Agnes, my Agnes! hast thou looked thy last On our sweet slumberer's face? The hour is comeThe couch made ready for his last repose. AGNES. Not yet! thou canst not take him from me yet! If he but left me for a few short days, This were too brief a gazing time to draw His angel image into my fond heart, And fix its beauty there. And now-oh! now, Never again the laughter of his eye Shall send its gladdening summer through my soul, Never on earth again. Yet, yet, delay! Thou canst not take him from me. Hus. My beloved! Is it not God hath taken him? the God That took our first-born, o'er whose early grave Oh! that near household grave, AGNES. Not half so much to part me from my child And I could dress its greensward with fresh flowers, |