James Watt (1736-1819)

200

        EULOGIUM OF JAMES WATT.

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 en-
grave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate metal like
wax before it,—draw out, without breaking, a thread as
fine as gossamer, and lift a ship of war like a bauble
in the air. It can embroider muslin and forge anchors,
—cut steel into ribbands, and impel loaded vessels
against the fury of the winds and waves.

It would be difficult to estimate the value of the be-
nefits which these inventions have conferred upon the
country. There is no branch of industry 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 thousandfold the
amount of its productions. It is our improved steam-
engine that has fought the battles of Europe, and exalted
and sustained, through the late tremendous contest, the
political greatness of our land. It is the same great
power which now enables us to pay the interest of our
debt, and to maintain the arduous struggle in which
we are still engaged, with the skill and capital of coun-
tries less oppressed with taxation. But these are poor
and narrow views of its importance. It 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