F A wide range of subjects of a scientific and useful nature continued to attract the notice of his inquiring mind. Among other pursuits, he had been induced, by the sorrow he experienced in losing his daughter, who died of consumption at an early age, "to step," as he expressed it, "over the bounds of his profession,” and to communicate to Dr. Beddoes the ideas he entertained on the employment of "pneumatic medicines." It appeared to him that if poisons could be carried into the system of the lungs, remedies might be thrown in by the same channel; and that, although there seemed to be objections to the introduction, in that way, of powders, such as of Peruvian bark, &c., however finely they might be mechanically divided, yet that if the virtues of such substances could be obtained by solution or suspension in air of some species, they might have their full effect when inhaled and respired. With the view of aiding medical practitioners, as well as private patients, in their experiments and researches on this subject, he contrived a convenient apparatus for the preparation and inhalation of the various airs, which was extensively manufactured for sale at Soho. He also in many ways greatly aided Dr. Beddoes in his establishment of the Pneumatic Institution at Clifton, near Bristol: an establishment famous for having early profited by the services, and developed the chemical talents, of Humphry Davy. The system from which Beddoes hoped so much, although it has never yet realised his large expectations, seemed at first to produce some remarkable results; and it is impossible to despise the importance of facts, or to overlook the ingenuity of deductions which were contributed by men such as Beddoes, Jenner, Edgeworth, Humphry Davy, and Watt, and which led all of them to expect effects of an extensively sanative and beneficial character.* It was always a favourite wish of Mr. Watt's heart to promote the attainment by others of that spirit of industrious research * See the 'Considerations on the Use of Factitious Airs, and on the Manner of obtaining them in large Quantities,' &c., by Dr. Beddoes and Mr. Watt, published at Bristol in 1794, 1795, and 1796. PNEUMATIC INSTITUTION. 327 and invention by which he had himself been so entirely governed; and the following is a letter by which he founded, in 1808, a prize in Glasgow College, as some acknowledgment on his part of "the many favours" that learned body had conferred upon him, and of his sense of the importance of promoting the special study of the sciences of natural philosophy and chemistry. It is addressed to the Rev. Dr. William Taylor, the Principal. "Heathfield, Birmingham, June 3rd, 1808. "REVEREND SIR,-I take the liberty of requesting you, in your official capacity, to communicate the following proposition to the Faculty of your University, and, on my part, to request their favourable acceptance of it. "Entertaining a due sense of the many favours conferred upon me by the University of Glasgow, I wish to leave them some memorial of my gratitude, and, at the same time, to excite a spirit of inquiry and exertion among the students of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry attending the College; which appears to me the more useful, as the very existence of Britain, as a nation, seems to me, in great measure, to depend upon her exertions in science and in the arts. I therefore propose to settle 3007. upon the College, in Trust, to be laid out at the best interest, upon landed security, 107. of which to be given annually as a premium for the best essay on some subject in one of the branches of Natural Philosophy hereinafter mentioned, which shall be appointed by a majority of the Principal, Professors, and Lecturers of the University, and which shall be composed by any actual student of the University who shall have gone through a regular course of Languages and Philosophy, either at Glasgow or in any other Scottish University. The prize to be adjudged by the majority above mentioned, in conjunction with Gilbert Hamilton, Esq., my brother-in-law, so long as he shall live; and [it] shall be subjected to the same rules and regulations, as to the time and manner of giving it in, as the other prize-essays appointed by the University. If in any year no essay shall be judged worthy of the prize, the same subject shall be re-appointed for the following year, and the premium reserved for it, to be adjudged at the same time with the premium for such other subject as shall be regularly appointed for such year; and if then no adequate essay shall appear, the said premium to be added to the principal sum. "I know not whether the interest will be subject to the propertytax; but, in any case, the surplus, whatever it may be, after paying the premiums, and 10s. 6d. to the clerk of the meeting, is to be added to the principal annuity; until it shall accumulate so that the interest shall be able to afford two premiums on two subjects, to be appointed as aforesaid. "I had at first intended that the subjects for the prize-essay should be taken from any branch of Natural Philosophy or Chemistry; and now think it proper to restrict them to the following branches, and in the following rotation: "First Year, to any branch of Mechanics, or its dependent Arts. "Second Year, to Statics, and the Machines and Arts dependent. "Third Year, to Pneumatics, Statical or Chemical Machines and Arts. "Fourth Year, to Hydraulics, Hydrostatics, their Machines and Arts. "Fifth Year, to Chemistry, its Arts and Apparatus. “The Sixth Year, the rotation to begin with Mechanics, as before, and so on by five years' rotations. "I should request a copy of the successful essay to be sent me annually, and, after my decease, to my male representative; and I request that no public mention may be made of this donation, by paragraphs in the newspapers, or otherwise, until a prize come to be adjudged; [I]ot being, as far as I know, actuated by vanity, but by a desire to stimulate others to do as I have done. "I reserve to myself, at any time during my life, by any writing under my hand, to change either the rotation or the sub SUBJECTS FOR PRIZE-ESSAY. 329 jects of the essays, as well as the other regulations concerning them. "Should what I now propose meet the approbation of the Faculty, I shall immediately direct a proper deed to be drawn, and the money to be paid to their order. "Requesting you, Sir, to accept my most respectful compliments, and to present them to all the other members of the Faculty, I have the honor to remain, Reverend Sir, your most obliged, and most obedient humble servant, JAMES WATT.” Some years later, also, (in 1816,) he made a donation to the town of Greenock, for the purpose of purchasing scientific books for the use of the mathematical school of the place, under the care and guardianship of the magistrates and town-council: his intention being "to form the beginning of a scientific library for the instruction of the youth of Greenock, in the hope of prompting others to add to it, and of rendering his townsmen as eminent for their knowledge as they are for their spirit of enterprise." This design carried out (as he wished) by his townsmen, with the munificent aid of his son, the late Mr. James Watt, has been at last completed; and a large and handsome building, containing the library and a beautiful memorial statue of its founder, by Chantrey, is now a principal ornament of that busy and prosperous seaport, which boasts that James Watt was born in her. Nor, amid such donations, given as aids to the promotion of sound and useful learning, were others wanting on his part, such as true religion prescribes, to console the poor and relieve the suffering. But those his benefactions, which were also secret, being usually accompanied at the time by an injunction not to make known the name of the donor, we shall not here seek farther to disclose; preferring to dwell on the comfortable truth, that "there be some persons that will not receive a reward for that for which God accounts Himself a debtor: persons that dare trust God with their charity, and without a witness.” * * Izaak Walton, Life of Dr. John Donne,' p. 54, ed. Oxford, 1824. : CHAPTER XXV. STEAM-NAVIGATION—ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS-PADDLE-WHEELS-EARLY STEAM- A SUBJECT which naturally excited a deep, and, indeed, at one time, rather an anxious interest in the breast of the great engineer, when resting in his latter days from the severer labours of his life, was that of steam-navigation. With every confidence in the probable success of such a system, he seems never in any very especial manner to have directed the force of his own mind to the details requisite for carrying it out; a circumstance which is quite explained by the constant demands on his time and attention made by other branches of the steam-engine business, so long as he continued to be actively engaged in its prosecution. The mere use of paddle-wheels, "remi rotatiles," or "rames tournantes," moved by animal force, for the progression of boats, appears to have been of considerable antiquity. Not to carry our inquiries further back, they have been fully described by Valturius, in his great work on the 'Science of War,' in 1472; by William Bourne, in 1578; by Denis Papin, (as having been seen by him in use in England, probably in 1682,) in 1690; by |