The steam-engine was in this state, when it happily attracted the attention of Mr. Watt, to whom the merit and honour is due, of having first rendered this invention available as a mechanical agent. We cannot illustrate the improvements of this ingenious individual better than by giving a short biographical sketch of him to whom the world is so much indebted. James Watt was born at Greenock, an extensive seaport in the west of Scotland, on the 19th of January, 1736. His father was a merchant, and also one of the magistrates of that town. He received the rudiments of his education in his native place; but his health being then extremely delicate, as it continued to be to the end of his life, his attendance at school was not always very regular. He amply made up, however, for what he lost in this way, by the diligence with which he pursued his studies at home, where, without any assistance, he succeeded, at a very early age, in making considerable proficiency in various branches of knowledge. Even at this time it is said his favourite study was mechanical science, to a love of which he was probably in some degree led by the example of his grandfather and his uncle, both of whom had been teachers of mathematics, and had left a considerable reputation for learning and ability in that department. Young Watt, however, was not indebted to any instruction of theirs for his own acquirements in science, the former having died two years before, and the latter one year after he was born. At the age of eighteen he was sent to London, to be apprenticed to a maker of mathematical instruments; but in little more than a year the state of his health forced him to return to Scotland; and he never received any further instruction in his profession. A year or two after this, however, a visit which he paid to some relations in Glasgow, suggested to him the plan of attempting to establish himself in that city, in the line for which he had been educated. In 1757, he accordingly removed thither, and was immediately appointed mathematical instrument maker to the College. In this situation he remained for some years, during which, notwithstanding almost constant ill health, he continued both to prosecute his profession, and to labour in the general cultivation of his mind, with extraordinary ardour and perseverance. Here also he enjoyed the intimacy and friendship of several distinguished persons, who were then members of the University, especially of the celebrated Dr. Black, the discoverer of the principle of latent heat, and Dr. Robison, so well known by his treatises on mechanical science, who was then a student, and about the same age as himself. Honourable, however as his present appointment was, and important as were many of the advantages to which it introduced him, he probably did not find it a very lucrative one; and therefore, in 1763, when about to marry, he removed from his apartments in the University, to a house in the city, and entered upon