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

212 MEMORIALS OF
tokens of a great transmutation. The railed-off beach which had
been wont to give to the deep its tiny vessel was beginning to extend
its bounds. The hereditary smithy was becoming a forge, even a
foundry ; the shoeing of horses giving place, it might be said, to the
creation of a portentous iron " horse-power" that would soon change
all other things. 1 But even Watt did not foresee to what an extent
that beach was, ere many years, to be covered with spacious dock-
yards, made conspicuous by the stateliest erections of naval architec-
ture ; and he of all other men perhaps, could the prediction have
been made, would have been the most sceptical as to its being ever
realized, that the largest and most splendid of such structures,
impelled by the new and as yet almost infantine machinery, should,
ere the lapse of many years from that time, be bearing round the
globe a practical exhibition of that genius whose persevering labour
had given to mankind the power of all but annihilating distance as
well as time, and adding to all the conveniences and luxuries of life.
The subject of the present chapter is interesting in many respects,
and in many ways suggestive. No apology is deemed necessary for
the local character of the details ; the only regret really felt being,
that the data for such a sketch as the present are not to a far greater
extent available.
Although the magnificent ocean steamships, both in wood and iron,
which weekly project themselves from the building-yards of the Clyde,
can hardly be said to be anywhere rivalled, in strength, symmetry of
mould, power and capacity for speed,— qualities which an admirer of
excellency in such exhibitions of art may be pardoned dwelling upon
with complacency, — still scarcely a century has elapsed since the first
1 It is a fact not generally perhaps known that of horses was a principal part of the hereditary
no farther back than the grandfathers of some of employment of their hammers and anvils,
our most celebrated engine-makers, the shoeing