Chapter IV: Part 4

On Watt's arrival in the metropolis, he sought a situation, but in vain, and he was beginning to despond, when he obtained work with one John Morgan, an instrument-maker, in Finch Lane, Cornhill. Here he gradually became proficient in making quadrants, parallel rulers, compasses, theodolites, etc., until, at the end of a year's practice, he could make "a brass sector with a French joint, which is reckoned as nice a piece of framing work as is in the trade." During this interval he contrived to live upon eight shillings a week, exclusive of his lodging. His fear of the press-gang and his bodily ailments, however, led to his quitting London in August, 1756, and returning to Scotland, after investing twenty guineas in additional tools.

At Glasgow, through the intervention of Dr. Dick, he was first employed in cleaning and repairing some of the instruments belonging to the college; and, after some difficulty, he received permission to open a shop within the precincts as "mathematical instrument maker to the University." Here Watt prospered, pursuing alike his course of manual labor and of mental study, and especially extending his acquaintance with physics; endeavoring, as he said, "to find out the weak side of nature, and to vanquish her." About this time he contrived an ingenious machine for drawing in perspective; and from fifty to eighty of these instruments, manufactured by him, were sent to different parts of the world. He had now procured the friendship of Dr. Black and another University worthy, John Robison, who, in stating the circumstances of his first introduction to Watt, says: "I saw a workman, and expected no more; but was surprised to find a philosopher as young as myself, and always ready to instruct me."

It was some time in 1764 that the professor of natural philosophy in the University desired Watt to repair a pretty model of Newcomen's steam-engine. Like everything which came into Watt's hands, it soon became an object of most serious study.

The interesting little model, as altered by the hand of Watt, was long placed beside the noble statue of the engineer in the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow. Watt himself, when he had got the bearings of his invention, could think of nothing else but his machine, and addressed himself to Dr. Roebuck, of the Carron Iron-works, with the view of its practical introduction to the world. A partnership ensued, but the connection did not prove satisfactory. Watt went on with his experiments, and in September, 1766, wrote to a friend: "I think I have laid up a stock of experience that will _soon_ pay me for the trouble it has cost me." Yet it was between eight and nine years before that invaluable experience was made available, so as either to benefit the public or repay the inventor; and a much longer term elapsed before it was possible for that repayment to be reckoned in the form of substantial profit.

Watt now began to practise as a land-surveyor and civil engineer. His first engineering work was a survey for a canal to unite the Forth and Clyde, in furtherance of which he had to appear before the House of Commons. His consequent journey to London was still more important, for then it was that he saw for the first time the great manufactory which Boulton had established at Soho, and of which he was afterward himself to be the guiding intelligence. In the meantime, among his other performances, he invented a micrometer for measuring distances; and, what is still more remarkable, he entertained the idea of moving canal-boats by the steam-engine through the instrumentality of a _spiral oar_, which as nearly as possible coincides with the screw-propeller of our day.

Watt's negotiations for partnership with Boulton were long and tedious. Dr. Roebuck's creditors concurred because, curiously enough, _none of them valued Watt's engine at a farthing_. Watt himself now began to despair, and his health failed; yet in 1774, when he had removed to Birmingham, he wrote to his father: "The fire-engine I have invented is now going, and answers much better than any other that has yet been made; and I expect that the invention will be very beneficial to me."

A long series of experimental trials was, nevertheless, requisite before the engine could be brought to such perfection as to render it generally available to the public, and therefore profitable to its manufacturers. In January, 1775, six years of the patent had elapsed, and there seemed some probability of the remaining eight running out as fruitlessly. An application which was made for the extension of its term was unexpectedly opposed by the eloquence of Burke; but the orator and his associates failed, and the extension was accorded by Act of Parliament.

The first practical employment of Watt's engines to any considerable extent was in the mining districts of Cornwall, where he himself was, in consequence, compelled to spend much of his time subsequent to 1775. Here he had to contend not only with natural obstacles in the dark abysses of deeply flooded mines, but with a rude and obstinate class of men as deeply flooded by inveterate prejudices. The result in the way of profit was not, however, satisfactory, notwithstanding the service to the mining interest was enormous. "It appears," says Watt, in 1780, "by our books, that Cornwall has hitherto eat up all the profits we have drawn from it, and all we have got by other places, and a good sum of our own money to the bargain."

At this stage Watt himself was more fertile in mechanical inventions than in any other portion of his busy life. Taking his patents in their chronological order, the first (subsequent to that of 1769) was "For a new method of copying letters and other writings expeditiously," by means of copying _presses_. Of the same date was his invention of a machine "for drying linen and muslin by steam." On October 25, 1781, he took out his third patent (the second of the steam-engine series), "for certain new methods of applying the vibrating or reciprocating motion of steam or fire engines, to produce a continued rotative motion round an axis or centre, and thereby to give motion to the wheels of mills or other machines." One of these methods was that commonly known as the _sun-and-planet wheels_; they were five in all. A favorite employment of his in the workshops at Soho, in the later months of 1783 and earlier ones of 1784, was to teach his steam-engine, now become nearly as docile as it was powerful, to work a tilt-hammer for forging iron and making steel. "Three hundred blows per minute--a thing never done before," filled him, as his biographer says, with feelings of excusable pride. Another patent in the steam-engine series, taken out in 1784, contained, besides other methods of converting a circular or angular motion into a perpendicular or rectilineal motion, the well-known and much-admired _parallel motion_, and the application of the steam-engine to give motion to wheel-carriages for carrying persons and goods. To ascertain the exact number of strokes made by an engine during a given time, and thereby to check the cheats of the Cornish miners, Watt also invented the "Counter," with its several indexes. Among his leading improvements, introduced at various periods, were the _throttle-valve_, the application of the _governor_, the _barometer_ or float, the _steam-gauge_, and the indicator. The term during which he seems to have thus combined the greatest maturity with the greatest activity of intellect, and the portion of his life which they comprehended, was from his fortieth to his fiftieth year. Yet it was a term of increased suffering from his acute sick-headaches, and remarkable for the infirmities over which he triumphed; notwithstanding, he himself complained of his "stupidity and want of the inventive faculty."

Watt's chemical studies in 1783, and the calculations they involved from experiments made by foreign chemists, induced him to make a proposal for a philosophical _uniformity of weights and measures_; and he discussed this proposal with Priestley and Magellan. While Watt was examining the constituent parts of water, he had opportunities of familiar intercourse not only with Priestley, but with Withering, Keir, Edgeworth, Galton, Darwin, and his own partner, Boulton--all men above the average for their common interest in scientific inquiries. Dr. Parr frequently attended their meetings, and they kept up a correspondence with Sir William Herschel, Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Solander, and Afzelius. Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, who was greatly given to physiognomical studies, has left us this picture of Watt at this period.

"Mr. Boulton was a man to rule society with dignity; Mr. Watt, to lead the contemplative life of a deeply introverted and patiently observant philosopher. He was 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 intellectual development was magnificent; comparison and causality immense, with large ideality and constructiveness, individuality, an enormous concentrativeness and caution.

"He had a broad Scottish accent; gentle, modest, and unassuming manners; yet, when he entered a room, men of letters, men of science, nay, military men, artists, ladies, even little children, thronged round him. Ladies would appeal to him on the best means of devising grates, curing smoky chimneys, warming their houses, and obtaining fast colors. I can speak from experience of his teaching me how to make a dulcimer and improve a Jew's harp."

In the year 1786, Watt and Boulton visited Paris, on the invitation of the French Government, to superintend the erection of certain steam-engines, and especially to suggest improvements in the great hydraulic machine of Marly, which Watt himself designates a "venerable" work. In Paris Watt made many acquaintances, including Lavoisier, Laplace, Fourcroy, and others scarcely less eminent; and while here he discussed with Berthollet a new method of _bleaching_ by chlorides, an invention of the latter which Watt subsequently introduced into England.

Meanwhile Watt had vigilantly to defend his patents at home, which were assailed by unworthy and surreptitious rivals as soon as it was proved that they were pecuniarily valuable. Some of the competing engines, as Watt himself described them, were simply asthmatic. "Hornblower's, at Radstock, was obliged to stand still once every ten minutes to snore and snort." "Some were like Evan's mill, _which was a gentlemanly mill_; it would go when it had nothing to do, but it refused to work." The legal proceedings, both in equity and at common law, which now became necessary, were numerous. One bill of costs, from 1796 to 1800, amounted to between £5,000 and £6,000; and the mental and bodily labor, the anxiety and vexation, which were superadded, involved a fearful tax on the province of Watt's discoveries.

With the year 1800 came the expiration of the privilege of the patent of 1769, as extended by the statute of 1775; and also the dissolution of the original copartnership of Messrs. Boulton and Watt, then of five-and-twenty years' duration. The contract was renewed by their sons, the business having become so profitable that Watt and his children were provided with a source of independent income; and at the age of sixty-four the great inventor had personally realized some of the benefits he contemplated.

Henceforth Watt's ingenuity became excursive, discretionary, almost capricious; but in every phase and form it continued to be beneficent. In 1808 he founded a prize in Glasgow College, as an acknowledgment of "the many favors that learned body had conferred upon him." In 1816 he made a donation to the town of Greenock, "to form the beginning of a scientific library" for the instruction of its young men. Nor, amid such donations, were others wanting on his part, such as true religion prescribes, to console the poor and relieve the suffering.

In 1816, on a visit to Greenock, Watt made a voyage in a steamboat to Rothsay and back again. In the course of this experimental trip he pointed out to the engineer of the boat the method of "backing" the engine. With a foot-rule he demonstrated to him what he meant. Not succeeding, however, he at last, under the impulse of the ruling passion (and we must remember he was then eighty), threw off his overcoat, and putting his hand to the engine himself, showed the practical application of his lecture. Previously to this, the "backstroke" of the steamboat engine was either unknown or not generally known. The practice was to stop the engine entirely a considerable time before the vessel reached the point of mooring, in order to allow for the gradual and natural diminution of her speed.

With regard to the application of steam power to _locomotion on land_, it is remarkable enough that, when Watt's attention was first directed, by his friend Robison, to the steam-engine, "he (Robison) at that time drew out an idea of applying the power to the moving of wheel-carriages." "But the scheme," adds Watt, "was not matured, and was soon abandoned on his going abroad."

In 1769, however, when he heard that a linen-draper, one Moore, had taken out a patent for moving wheel-carriages by steam, he replied: "If linen-draper Moore does not use my engine to drive his chaises, he can't drive them by steam." In the specification of his patent of 1784, he even described the principles and construction of "steam-engines which are applied to give motion to wheel-carriages for removing persons or goods, or other matters, from place to place," and in 1786, Watt himself had a steam-carriage "of some size under hand;" but his most developed plan was to move such carriages "on a hard smooth plane," and there is no evidence to show that he ever anticipated the union of the rail and wheel.

Among Watt's mechanical recreations, soon after the date of the last of his steam-engine patents, were four plans of making lamps, which he describes in a letter to Argand; and for a long time lamps were made at Soho upon his principles, which gave a light surpassing, both in steadiness and brilliancy, anything of the kind that had appeared. About a year after, in 1788, he made "a pretty instrument for determining the specific gravities of liquids," having, he says to Dr. Black, improved on a hint he had taken.

Watt also turned his "idle thoughts" toward the construction of an _arithmetical machine_, but he does not appear ever to have prosecuted this design further than by mentally considering the manner in which he could make it perform the processes of multiplication and division.

Early in the present century Watt devised, for the Glasgow water-works, to bring pure spring-water across the Clyde, an articulated suction-pipe, with joints formed on the principle of those in a lobster's tail, and so made capable of accommodating itself to all the actual and possible bendings at the bottom of the river. This pipe was, moreover, executed at Soho from his plans, and was found to succeed perfectly.

Watt describes, as his hobby, a _machine to copy sculpture_, suggested to him by an implement he had seen and admired in Paris in 1802, where it was used for tracing and multiplying the dies of medals. He foresaw the possibility of enlarging its powers so as to make it capable of working even on wood and marble, to do for solid masses and in hard materials what his copying machine of 1782 had already done for drawings and writings impressed upon flat surfaces of paper--to produce, in fact, a perfect fac-simile of the original model. He worked at this machine most assiduously, and his "likeness lathe," as he termed it, was set up in a garret, which, with all its mysterious contents, its tools, and models included, have been carefully preserved as he left them.

It is gratifying to find that the charm of Watt's presence was not dimmed by age. "His friends," says Lord Jeffrey, speaking of a visit which he paid to Scotland when upward of eighty, "in that part of the country never saw him more full of intellectual vigor and colloquial animation, never more delightful or more instructive." It was then also that Sir Walter Scott, meeting him "surrounded by a little band of northern literati," saw and heard what he felt he was never to see or hear again--"the alert, kind, benevolent old man, his talents and fancy overflowing on every subject, with his attention alive to everyone's question his information at everyone's command." Campbell, the poet, who saw him later, in the beginning of 1819 (he was then eighty-three), describes him as so full of anecdote, that he spent one of the most amusing days he had ever had with him. Lord Brougham, later still, in the summer of the same year, found his instructive conversation and his lively and even playful manner unchanged. But in the autumn of this year, on August 19th, he expired tranquilly at his house at Heathfield. He was buried at Handsworth. A tribute to his memory was but tardily rendered by the nation.

Jeffrey and Arago added more elaborate tributes to Watt's genius; and Wordsworth has declared that he looked upon him, considering his magnitude and universality, "as perhaps the most extraordinary man that this country has ever produced." His noblest monument is, however, his own work.

DR. EDWARD JENNER

By JOHN TIMBS, F.S.A.

(1749-1823)

Few of the many thousand ills which human flesh is heir to, have spread such devastation among the family of man as small-pox. Its universality has ranged from the untold tribes of savages to the silken baron of civilization; and its ravages on life and beauty have been shown in many a sad tale of domestic suffering. To stay the destroying hand of such a scourge, which by some has been identified with the Plague of Athens, was reserved for Edward Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination.

The great fact can, however, be traced half a century before Jenner's time. In the journal of John Byron, F.R.S., under date June 3, 1725, it is recorded that: "At a meeting of the Royal Society, Sir Isaac Newton presiding, Dr. Jurin read a case of small-pox, where a girl who had been inoculated and had been vaccinated, was tried and had them not again; but another [a] boy, caught the small-pox from this girl, and had the confluent kind and died."

This case occurred at Hanover. The inoculation of the girl seems to have failed entirely; it was suspected that she had not taken the true small-pox; doubts, however, were removed, as a boy, who daily saw the girl, fell ill and died, "having had a very bad small-pox of the confluent sort." This is the first use of the word _vaccination_, or, more familiarly, cow-pox, which is an eruption arising from the insertion into the system of matter obtained from the eruption on the teats and udders of cows, and especially in Gloucestershire; it is also frequently denominated _vaccine matter_; and the whole affair, inoculation and its consequences, is called vaccination, from the Latin _vacca_, a cow.

It is admitted that Jenner's merit lay in the scientific application of his knowledge of the fact that the chapped hands of milkers of cows sometimes proved a preventive of small-pox, and from those of them whom he endeavored to inoculate resisting the infection. These results were probably known far beyond Jenner's range, and long before his time; for we have respectable testimony of their having come within the observation of a Cheshire gentleman, who had been informed of them shortly after settling on his estate in Prestbury parish, in or about 1740. This does not in the least detract from Jenner's merit, but shows that to his genius for observation, analogy, and experiment, we are indebted for this application of a simple fact, only incidentally remarked by others, but by Jenner rendered the stepping-stone to his great discovery--or, in other words, extending its benefits from a single parish in Gloucestershire to the whole world.

We agree with a contemporary, that, "among all the names which ought to be consecrated by the gratitude of mankind, that of Jenner stands pre-eminent. It would be difficult, we are inclined to say impossible, to select from the catalogue of benefactors to human nature an individual who has contributed so largely to the preservation of life, and to the alleviation of suffering. Into whatever corner of the world the blessing of printed knowledge has penetrated, there also will the name of Jenner be familiar; but the fruits of his discovery have ripened in barbarous soils, where books have never been opened, and where the savage does not pause to inquire from what source he has derived relief. No improvement in the physical sciences can bear a parallel with that which ministers in every part of the globe to the prevention of deformity, and, in a great proportion, to the exemption from actual destruction."

The ravages which the small-pox formerly committed are scarcely conceived or recollected by the present generation. An instance of death occurring after vaccination is now eagerly seized and commented upon; yet seventy years have not elapsed since this disease might fairly be termed the scourge of mankind, and an enemy more extensive and more insidious than even the plague. A family blighted in its fairest hopes through this terrible visitation was an every-day spectacle: the imperial House of Austria lost eleven of its offspring in fifty years. This instance is mentioned because it is historical; but in the obscure and unrecorded scenes of life this pest was often a still more merciless intruder.

Edward Jenner was the third son of the Vicar of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, where he was born, May 17, 1749. Before he was nine years of age he showed a growing taste for natural history, in forming a collection of the nests of the dormouse; and when at school at Cirencester he was fond of searching for fossils, which abound in that neighborhood. He was articled to a surgeon at Sudbury, near Bristol, and at the end of his apprenticeship came to London, and studied under John Hunter, with whom he resided as a pupil for two years and formed a lasting friendship with that great man. In 1773 he returned to his native village, and commenced practice as a surgeon and apothecary, with great success. Nevertheless, he abstracted from the fatigues of country practice sufficient time to form a museum of specimens of comparative anatomy and natural history. He was much liked, was a man of lively and simple humor, and loved to tell his observation of nature in homely verse; and in 1788 he communicated to the Royal Society his curious paper on the cuckoo. At the same time he carried to London a drawing of the casual disease, as seen on the hands of the milkers, and showed it to Sir Everard Home and to others. John Hunter had alluded frequently to the fact in his lectures; Dr. Adams had heard of the cow-pox both from Hunter and Clive, and mentions it in his "Treatise on Poisons," published in 1795, three years previous to Jenner's own publication. Still, no one had the courage or the penetration to prosecute the inquiry except Jenner.

Jenner now resolved to confine his practice to medicine, and obtained, in 1792, a degree of M.D. from the University of St. Andrew's.

We now arrive at the great event of Jenner's life. While pursuing his professional education in the house of his master at Sudbury, a young countrywoman applied for advice; and the subject of small-pox being casually mentioned, she remarked she could not take the small-pox because she had had cow-pox; and he then learnt that it was a popular notion in that district, that milkers who had been infected with a peculiar eruption which sometimes occurred on the udder of the cow, were completely secure against the small-pox. The medical gentlemen of the district told Jenner that the security which it gave was not perfect; and Sir George Baker, the physician, treated it as a popular error. But Jenner thought otherwise; and although John Hunter and other eminent surgeons disregarded the subject, Jenner pursued it. He found at Berkeley that some persons, to whom it was impossible to give small-pox by inoculation, had had cow-pox; but that others who had had cow-pox yet received small-pox. This led to the doctor's discovery that the cow was subject to a certain eruption, which had the power of guarding from small-pox; and next, that it might be possible to propagate the cow-pox, and with it security from the small-pox, first from the cow to the human body, and thence from one person to another. Here, then, was an important discovery, that matter from the cow, intentionally inserted into the body, gave a slighter ailment than when received otherwise, and yet had the same effect of completely preventing small-pox. But of what advantage was it for mankind that the cows of Gloucestershire possessed a matter thus singularly powerful? How were persons living at a distance to derive benefit from this great discovery? Dr. Jenner, having inoculated several persons from a cow, took the matter from the human vesicles thus produced, and inoculated others, and others from them again; thus making it pass in succession through many individuals, and all with the same good effect in preventing small-pox.

An opportunity occurred of making a trial of the latter on May 14, 1796 (a day still commemorated by the annual festival at Berlin), when a boy, aged eight years, was vaccinated with matter from the hands of a milkmaid; the experiment succeeded, and he was inoculated for small-pox on July 1st following without the least effect. Dr. Jenner then extended his experiments, and in 1798 published his first memoir on the subject. He had originally intended to communicate his results to the Royal Society, but was admonished not to do so, lest it should injure the character which he had previously acquired among scientific persons by his paper on the natural history of the cuckoo. In the above work Dr. Jenner announces the security against small-pox afforded by the true cow-pox, and also traces the origin of that disease in the cow to a similar affection of the heel of the horse.

The method, however, met with much opposition, until, in the following year, thirty-three leading physicians and forty eminent surgeons of London signed an earnest expression of their confidence in the efficacy of the cow-pox. The royal family of England exerted themselves to encourage Jenner; the Duke of Clarence, the Duke of York, the king, the Prince of Wales, and the queen bestowed great attention upon Jenner. The incalculable utility of cow-pox was at last evinced; and observation and experience furnished evidence enough to satisfy the Baillies and Heberdens, the Monros and Gregorys of Britain, as well as the physicians of Europe, India, and America. The new practice now began to supersede the old plan pursued by the Small-pox Hospital, which had been founded for inoculation. The two systems were each pursued until 1808, when the hospital governors discontinued small-pox inoculation.

A committee of Parliament was now appointed to consider the claims of Jenner upon the gratitude of his country. It was clearly proved that he had converted into scientific demonstration a tradition of the peasantry. Two parliamentary grants, of £10,000 and £20,000, were voted to him. In 1808 the National Vaccine Establishment was formed by Government, and placed under his direction. Honors were profusely showered upon him by various foreign princes, as well as by the principal learned bodies of Europe.

Dr. Jenner passed the remainder of his years principally at Berkeley and at Cheltenham, continuing to the last, his inquiries on the great object of his life. He died at Berkeley, in February, 1823, at the green old age of seventy-four: his remains lie in the chancel of the parish church of Berkeley. A marble statue by Sievier has been erected to his memory in the nave of Gloucester Cathedral; and another statue of him has been placed in a public building at Cheltenham. Five medals have been struck in honor of Jenner: three by the German nation; one by the surgeons of the British navy; and the fifth by the London Medical Society.

Dr. Jenner was endowed with a rare quality of mind, which it may be both interesting and beneficial to sketch. A singular originality of thought was his leading characteristic. He appeared to have naturally inherited what in others is the result of protracted study. He seemed to think from originality of perception alone, and not from induction. He arrived by a glance at inferences which would have occupied the laborious conclusions of most men. In human and animal pathology, in comparative anatomy, and in geology, he perceived facts and formed theories instantaneously, and with a spirit of inventive penetration which distanced the slower approaches of more learned men. But if his powers of mind were singularly great, the qualities which accompanied them were still more felicitous. He possessed the most singular amenity of disposition with the highest feeling, the rarest simplicity united to the highest genius. In the great distinction and the superior society to which his discovery introduced him, the native cast of his character was unchanged. Among the great monarchs of Europe, who, when in Great Britain, solicited his acquaintance, he was the unaltered Dr. Jenner of his birthplace. In the other moral points of his character, affection, friendship, beneficence, and liberality were pre-eminent In religion, his belief was equally remote from laxity and fanaticism; and he observed to an intimate friend, not long before his death, that he wondered not that the people were ungrateful to him for his discovery, but he was surprised that they were ungrateful to God for the benefits of which he was the humble means.

ROBERT FULTON[8]

[Footnote 8: Copyright, 1864, by Selmar Hess.]

By OLIVER OPTIC

(1765-1815)

Very few inventors have achieved success in giving to the world new or improved methods of carrying on the business of life without long and hard study, repeated experiments and failures, and trying struggles with opposing elements. Many have labored through long years of poverty and obscurity to dazzle their fellow-beings in the end by the triumph of genius. The idea of an inventor has almost become coupled with that of anxiety, patient or impatient waiting, trials, and hardships. They are usually enthusiasts in the special pursuit to which they devote themselves, and the coldness and incredulity of those whose approval they seek to win, wear heavily upon them. The chilling common-sense of men more practical than themselves overwhelms them.

If the wonderful improvements of the present and the past age could be placed in comparison with the attempts, the struggles, to accomplish what has now been achieved, the list of failures would far outnumber that of successes. Many of those who have rendered priceless blessings to their own and after generations by the production of wonderful machines or methods from the fine fibre of their brains, were plundered and buffeted, even in the midst of their grand successes, to such a degree that it requires a lofty comprehension to determine whether their lives were triumphs or defeats. Sometimes the failure of one generation becomes the success of the next.

Born the same year that gave Robert Fulton to the world was Eli Whitney, who really made "cotton king," so that the great staple of the South yielded millions upon millions of dollars to the planters; but he might have died a beggar, so far as his marvellous invention affected his fortunes. Before he had fully completed his machine for separating the seeds from the cotton, which only two persons had been permitted to see, his workshop was broken open, and it was stolen. His idea was incorporated in other machines before he had obtained his patent, though it was only his own that transmuted cotton into gold. False reports, the repudiation of contracts for royalties fairly made, the refusal of Congress, through Southern influence, to renew his patent, constant litigation to protect his rights, harassed his life, and robbed him of the pecuniary results of his success. Defeated, he gave up the battle, devoted his attention to the manufacture of firearms, and finally made a fortune in this business. Fulton's experience was not very different.

On the other hand, important discoveries in methods and mechanical appliances have been made by accident, as it were, and fortunes accrued from very little labor or study; but these are the exceptions rather than the rule.

It would be difficult to estimate the influence upon the prosperity of the United States of steam-navigation. It came but a few years after the organization of the Federal Government, when the greater portion of the territorial extent of the country was a wilderness, and preceded the general use of railroads by a quarter of a century. Transportation on the inland waters of the nation was slow, difficult, and expensive, and the introduction of the steamboat upon its great lakes and rivers, notably upon the latter, was a new era in its history. On the great streams of the West flatboats floated for weeks, laden with the productions of the States, on their way to a market, where days or hours are sufficient at the present time. Between the metropolis of the nation and the capital of New York, the sloops, which were the only means of communication by water, required an average of four days to make the trip of about one hundred and fifty miles, while to-day it is accomplished in half a day or less.

Now all the navigable rivers of the country are alive with steamboats, and the growth and development of the States have been mainly indebted to the introduction of steam navigation. On the great lakes, though more available for transportation by means of sailing vessels, the same powerful agency has achieved wonders, and all of them are now covered by lines of steamers, by which, either as tow-boats or independent vessels, a large proportion of the inland commerce of the nation is carried on. On the ocean the result of the introduction of steam-navigation is even more impressive, and nations separated by thousands of miles of rolling billows now join hands, as it were, with hearts commercially united, if not more intimately, through the medium of peace-giving commerce, of which thousands of gigantic steamers are the angel-messengers. On the Atlantic a score or more of them leave the one side for the other every week, and at the present time a merchant may breakfast in New York on Saturday, and dine in London the next Saturday.

It is now conceded, both in Europe and America, that the world is indebted to Robert Fulton for the practical application of steam to the purposes of navigation. Whatever has been claimed for or by others in regard to the priority of the invention or application of the mighty power of steam to the propulsion of vessels, Fulton was "the first to apply it with any degree of practical success," as an English work states it. As one who labored for years over the idea which came from his own brain, though it also came to others, who wellnigh sacrificed his own life in its improvement, and who achieved the crowning glory of its utility, he is certainly entitled to be regarded and honored as the Father of Steam-Navigation.

Robert Fulton was born in a small village near Lancaster, in the State of Pennsylvania, in the year 1765. He was the son of a poor man of Scotch-Irish descent, who died when his son was only three years old. He obtained only a common-school education, which he afterward increased by his own efforts. He early manifested a taste for, and considerable skill in, drawing and painting, and he selected this art as his profession, though he was more inclined to mechanical occupations, and spent his leisure hours in the shops of the workmen in his vicinity. He was somewhat precocious in his development, and at the age of seventeen he established himself as a portrait painter. He could hardly have attained to any high standard in art, though it appears that he had considerable success in his occupation, for at the age of twenty-one he had purchased a small farm in the western part of the State, where he placed his mother, indicating that he had a proper filial regard for the welfare of his remaining parent. It was evident from this success that he had decided talent and that it attracted the attention of others.

He was advised to visit England and place himself under the tuition of Benjamin West, the eminent American painter, who had achieved distinguished success in art. He followed this advice, was kindly received by the great artist, and remained as an inmate of his home for some years. In the palaces and mansions of the British nobility were treasured up many of the most noted pictures of the day and of the past. In order to see, study, and copy these, Fulton procured letters of introduction which gave him admission to these paintings. He resided for some time in the stately mansions of the Duke of Bridgewater and Earl Stanhope. Both of these peers were largely interested in making internal improvements in England, especially in promoting inland navigation by canals.

The duke was the possessor of immense wealth, and he had invested largely in companies connected with the canal system. Through him Fulton became interested in the same subject, and his mechanical tastes and talent drew him in that direction. The result was that he abandoned his easel and became a civil engineer, a profession hardly known by that name in the early part of this century. Earl Stanhope was also of a mechanical turn of mind, and had projected some important enterprises. At that time he was engaged upon a scheme which afterward filled up so much of the existence of Fulton--the application of steam to navigation.

The earl had devised a method of accomplishing the result, and had caused a small craft to be built which was to be propelled by a series of floats, by some compared to the paddles of a canoe, and by others to the feet of water-fowls. He described his plan to Fulton, who did not regard it as practicable, and stated plainly the reasons for his belief. The earl clung to his idea, highly as he appreciated the talents of the critic. The inventor resided at Birmingham about two years, and was employed in a subordinate capacity at his newly adopted profession for the greater portion of the time. In this city he made the acquaintance of Watt, who had developed the steam-engine from a mere pumping-machine to something near what it is at the present time.

Fulton's inventive genius was exercised during his residence at Birmingham, and he devised an improvement of the machine for sawing marble, from which he reaped both honor and profit. He produced a machine for spinning flax, and for the manufacture of ropes, and also one for excavating canals or river bottoms, for which purpose many such are now in use. As an author he wrote a work on canals, and published a treatise on the same subject in a London paper. He had a plan for the use of inclined planes in changing the level of the water for boats on canals, in place of locks, after the manner of the Chinese, claiming that greater elevations could be overcome in this manner; but it was never adopted.

In 1797 Fulton went to Paris, where he resided seven years, as the terrors of the French Revolution were passing away. At this period he had invented what is now called a torpedo, largely used in modern warfare for the protection of harbors. He devised a submarine boat to operate these destructive weapons, which was not a success. He demonstrated what he claimed for the torpedo in the destruction of a brig of two hundred tons; but he failed to procure the adoption of this more modern engine of warfare by either France or England, and he had the honor to be snubbed by Napoleon I. In 1806 he returned to New York, where he labored for the recognition and introduction of the torpedo. He was encouraged by Jefferson and Madison, and Congress appropriated money for experiments; but the naval officers reported against him, and nothing came of his efforts.

In Paris he had made the acquaintance of Chancellor Livingston, then the American minister to France, who was interested in Fulton's work, and who soon entered into business relations with him in connection with it. He was a man of abundant fortune, while the inventor was comparatively poor; occupied an elevated social position, and was a person of great influence. He obtained a grant of the monopoly of steam-navigation from the State of New York. Fulton took out two patents for his invention; but unfortunately they were not adequate to his protection, for they covered only the application of the steam-engine to the turning of a crank in producing the rotary motion of the paddle-wheels.

While in England Fulton had contracted with Watt for the building of such an engine as he desired, without stating the purpose for which it was to be used. This engine reached New York at about the same time as the inventor. He made his plans for the construction of the boat, which was to be of different form and proportions from ordinary vessels, and it was completed and fitted out with its engine during the year following his return. Not long before this event, when he found the sum of money Mr. Livingston had provided to complete the steamboat was nearly exhausted, Fulton attempted to sell an interest in his exclusive grant in order to raise funds to supply the deficiency; but so little faith existed in the success of his enterprise that he could find no one who had the courage to purchase it. But the vessel was finished, and a trial trip was made in her, to which gentlemen of science and general intelligence were invited, most of them, like the rest of the world, sceptics and unbelievers. A few minutes served to satisfy these men that the steamboat was a success, and that the problem of steam-navigation had been solved in its favor. It was the hour of Fulton's triumph.

The strange craft, to which the name of Clermont had been given, soon made a trip to Albany, accomplishing the distance in thirty-two hours, or one-third of the average time of the sloops, and making the return in thirty. Doubters and cavillers were silenced, and regular trips were made till the ice closed the river for the season. During the winter the Clermont was lengthened to one hundred and forty feet, improved in many respects, gaudily painted, and looked upon as a "floating palace." Another steamboat, called the Car of Neptune, was built, and soon a contract for five more was placed. The practical triumph had been achieved, and from that small beginning has come forth the mighty steam-marine of the present time.

Fulton was married to Miss Harriet Livingston, a niece of the Chancellor, and was the father of four children. His business affairs were in anything but a prosperous condition. The State of New Jersey contested his monopoly, which proved to have been unconstitutionally granted. Fitch, or his successors, who had made some successes in the same line, endeavored to supplant him, and his patents were worthless. He was embarrassed by constant litigation, and his last years were full of trials and anxiety. He died February 24, 1815, at the age of fifty.

[Signature: William S. Adams.]

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE

(1759-1833)

William Wilberforce, whose name a heartfelt, enlightened, and unwearied philanthropy, directing talents of the highest order, has enrolled among those of the most illustrious benefactors of mankind, was born August 24, 1759, in Hull, England, where his ancestors had been long and successfully engaged in trade. By his father's death he was left an orphan at an early age. He received the chief part of his education at the grammar school of Pockington, in Yorkshire, and at St. John's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow-commoner about 1776 or 1777. When just of age, and apparently before taking his B.A. degree, he was returned for his native town at the general election of 1780. In 1784 he was returned again, but being also chosen member for Yorkshire he elected to sit for that great county, which he continued to represent until the year 1812, during six successive Parliaments. From 1812 to 1825, when he retired from Parliament, he was returned by Lord Calthorpe for the borough of Bramber. His politics were in general those of Mr. Pitt's party, and his first prominent appearance was in 1783, in opposition to Mr. Fox's India Bill. In 1786 he introduced and carried through the Commons a bill for the amendment of the criminal code, which was roughly handled by the Lord Chancellor, Thurlow, and rejected in the House of Lords without a division.

At the time when Mr. Wilberforce was rising into manhood, the inquiry into the slave trade had engaged in a slight degree the attention of the public. To the Quakers belongs the high honor of having taken the lead in denouncing that unjust and unchristian traffic. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, during the life of Penn, the Quakers of Pennsylvania passed a censure upon it, and from time to time the Society of Friends expressed their disapprobation of the deportation of negroes, until, in 1761, they completed their good work by a resolution to disown all such as continued to be engaged in it. Occasionally the question was brought before magistrates, whether a slave became entitled to his liberty upon landing in England. In 1765 Granville Sharp came forward as the protector of a negro, who, having been abandoned and cast upon the world in disease and misery by his owner, was healed and assisted through the charity of Mr. Sharp's brother. Recovering his value with his health, he was claimed and seized by his master, and would have been shipped to the colonies, as many Africans were, but for the prompt and resolute interference of Mr. Sharp. In several similar cases the same gentleman came forward successfully; but the general question was not determined, or even argued, until 1772, when the celebrated case of the negro Somerset was brought before the Court of King's Bench, which adjudged, after a deliberate hearing, that in England the right of the master over the slave could not be maintained. The general question was afterward, in 1778, decided still more absolutely by the Scotch Courts, in the case of Wedderburn _vs._ Knight. In 1783 an event occurred well qualified to rouse the feelings of the nation, and call its attention to the atrocities of which the slave trade was the cause and pretext. An action was brought by certain underwriters against the owners of the ship Zong, on the ground that the captain had caused 132 weak, sickly slaves to be thrown overboard for the purpose of claiming their value, for which the plaintiffs would not have been liable if the cargo had died a natural death. The fact of the drowning was admitted, and defended on the plea that want of water had rendered it necessary, though it appeared that the crew had not been put upon short allowance. It now seems incredible that no criminal proceeding should have been instituted against the perpetrators of this wholesale murder.

In 1785 the Vice-chancellor of Cambridge proposed as the subject for the Bachelor's Prize Essay, the question, Is it allowable to enslave men without their consent? Thomas Clarkson, who had gained the prize in the preceding year, again became a candidate. Conceiving that the thesis, though couched in general terms, had an especial reference to the African slave trade, he went to London to make inquiries on the subject. Investigation brought under his view a mass of cruelties and abominations which engrossed his thoughts and shocked his imagination. By night and day they haunted him; and he has described in lively colors the intense pain which this composition, undertaken solely in the spirit of honorable rivalry, inflicted on him. He gained the prize, but found it impossible to discard the subject from his thoughts. In the succeeding autumn, after great struggles of mind, he resolved to give up his plan for entering the Church, and devoted time, health, and substance (to use his own words) to "seeing these calamities to an end." In sketching the progress of this great measure, the name of Wilberforce alone will be presented to view; and it is our duty, therefore, in the first place, to make honorable mention of him who first roused Wilberforce in the cause, and whose athletic vigor and indomitable perseverance surmounted danger, difficulties, fatigues, and discouragements which few men could have endured, in the first great object of collecting evidence of the cruelties habitually perpetrated in the slave trade.