66 his own ingenuity, which was very considerable, we know not), seems to have made a wonderfully near approximation to the real secret which alone was wanting to bring the whole system into activity, when he wrote, in 1813, " I have always thought that steam would become the universal lord, and that "we should in time scorn post-horses. An iron railroad would "be a cheaper thing than a road on the common construction.” Mr. Edgeworth's reflections may, not improbably, have arisen on his perusal of Sir Richard Phillips' Morning 'Walk to Kew,' published in the same year, 1813; in which the following remarkable passage occurs:-"I found "delight in witnessing at Wandsworth the economy of horse "labour on the iron railway. Yet a heavy sigh escaped me, "as I thought of the inconceivable millions of money which "had been spent about Malta, four or five of which might "have been the means of extending double lines of iron rail"way from London to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Holyhead, Mil"ford, Falmouth, Yarmouth, Dover, and Portsmouth. A "reward of a single thousand would have supplied coaches, "and other vehicles, of various degrees of speed, with the "best tackle for readily turning out; and we might, ere this, "have witnessed our mail coaches running at the rate of ten “miles an hour, drawn by a single horse, or impelled fifteen “miles an hour by Blenkinsop's steam-engine. Such would "have been a legitimate motive for overstepping the income "of a nation; and the completion of so great and useful a "work would have afforded rational ground for public triumph "in general jubilee.”† As a pendant to these annals of some of the earliest attempts, in this country, to effect locomotion on land by steam, we may here record the curious coincidence that, in 1841, the subject prescribed for the Latin Epigram for Sir William Browne's gold medal at Cambridge having been "Vehicula vi vaporis impulsa," the prize was gained by Matthew Piers Watt Boulton, of Trinity College, the grand *To Mr. Watt, 7th August, 1813. son of Matthew Boulton of Soho. The following is the prize composition, with some slight variations since made by its author: The sense of which may be rendered,-though its elegance is not equalled,-by this English translation: "Above all nations, great and free "Let Greece not boast her Dædalus, "Its iron way athwart the plain "O'er brooks and rivers steering, 66 Through mountains piercing, and again CHAPTER XXVI. ARITHMETICAL MA NEW LAMPS -GRAVIMETER - CAOUTCHOUC TUBES IN ITS OPERATIONS By another of what may be called his mechanical recreations, practised soon after the date of the last of his steam-engine patents, Mr. Watt seems to have realised the idea, made classical by the story of Aladdin, of "New lamps for old." His letters to Mr. Argand, famed for manufactures of that sort, contain various ingenious suggestions on the subject of better reading-lamps than had before existed; and for a long time lamps were made at Soho on Mr. Watt's principles, which gave a light surpassing both in steadiness and brilliance anything of the kind that had appeared in those comparatively dark ages; and which, indeed, we have seldom, if ever, seen equalled by the elaborate contrivances so much vaunted in our own days of more general illumination. In 1788, he made a pretty instrument for determining the specific gravities of liquids; having, he says, improved on a hint he had taken. "It consists of a syphon of "two equal legs, with a tube joined to the bend of it, "and a little water in that tube. One leg being im"mersed in water, and the other in the liquid to be examined, by sucking at the pipe the liquors will "both rise to columns proportioned to their specific "gravities; and, if it is about 13 inches long in the legs, 66 6 his own ingenuity, which was very considerable, we know not), seems to have made a wonderfully near approximation to the real secret which alone was wanting to bring the whole system into activity, when he wrote, in 1813, "I have always "thought that steam would become the universal lord, and that "we should in time scorn post-horses. An iron railroad would "be a cheaper thing than a road on the common construction." Mr. Edgeworth's reflections may, not improbably, have arisen on his perusal of Sir Richard Phillips' Morning Walk to Kew,' published in the same year, 1813; in which the following remarkable passage occurs :-"I found delight in witnessing at Wandsworth the economy of horse "labour on the iron railway. Yet a heavy sigh escaped me, "as I thought of the inconceivable millions of money which "had been spent about Malta, four or five of which might "have been the means of extending double lines of iron rail"way from London to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Holyhead, Mil"ford, Falmouth, Yarmouth, Dover, and Portsmouth. A "reward of a single thousand would have supplied coaches, "and other vehicles, of various degrees of speed, with the "best tackle for readily turning out; and we might, ere this, "have witnessed our mail coaches running at the rate of ten "miles an hour, drawn by a single horse, or impelled fifteen “miles an hour by Blenkinsop's steam-engine. Such would "have been a legitimate motive for overstepping the income "of a nation; and the completion of so great and useful a "work would have afforded rational ground for public triumph "in general jubilee.”† As a pendant to these annals of some of the earliest attempts, in this country, to effect locomotion on land by steam, we may here record the curious coincidence that, in 1841, the subject prescribed for the Latin Epigram for Sir William Browne's gold medal at Cambridge having been "Vehicula vi vaporis impulsa," the prize was gained by Matthew Piers Watt Boulton, of Trinity College, the grand *To Mr. Watt, 7th August, 1813. |