Memorials of the lineage, early life, education and development of the genius of James Watt

■ JAMES WATT. 159
our narrative, therefore, at a period immediately subsequent to this
singularly propitious juncture, and pursuing only the principles which
have hitherto guided us in the use of the facts and materials at our
disposal, we shall leave their details to throw what light they may on
the continuity and connexion of those events which project their
influence into the great future of Watt's career, as an Engineer and
Mechanician.
In a former chapter occasion was taken to advert to some external
influences, which might be regarded as having favoured the develop-
ment and direction of Watt's genius into the channel which eventually
conducted it to its greatest achievements. These were, in general,
those events which, before or about the year 1760, had begun to sig-
nalize a new era in the arts and sciences, learned and polite, through-
out the empire ; when a thirst for improvement and invention per-
vaded all ranks, scientific as well as productive, and everything that
could contribute to comfort, wealth, and industrial prosperity, received
an attention so marked, as to distinguish the period by a character
altogether peculiar to it. At the threshold of Watt's entrance upon
professional life, it cannot be uninteresting to observe the contact of
the yet plastic mind with the new state of things around it.
Arrived in the city of Glasgow, then, — a locality already attracting
to itself a large proportion of the wealth and enterprise of Scotland,
and already becoming the great centre of commercial and manu-
facturing activity in the north, — Watt had, at the same time, come
within the range of an intellectual and philosophical activity to which
he could not long be altogether insensible. Conspicuous in those days
in promoting and operating upon the great social movement to which
allusion has been made, was one energetic mind in particular, one
connected directly with the interests of science in that city, but whose
public spirit, and, it may perhaps now with fairness be added, large
benevolence, did not suffer him to limit his efforts for the benefit of his