These are the chief improvements which Watt effected at different periods of his life. He was born June 19, 1736, at Greenock, where he received the rudiments of his education. Having at an early age manifested a partiality for the practical part of mechanics, he went in his eighteenth year to London to obtain instruction in the profession of a mathematical instrument-maker, but remained there little more than a year, being compelled to return home on account of his health. In 1757, shortly after his return home, he was appointed instrument-maker to the University of Glasgow, and accommodated with premises within the precincts of that learned body. In 1763 he removed into the town of Glasgow, intending to practise as a civil engineer. His first patent is dated June 5, 1769, which parliament extended in 1775 for twenty-five years in consideration of the national importance of the inventions, and the difficulty and expense of introducing them to public notice. He died at his house at Heathfield in the county of Stafford, on the 25th of August, 1819, at the advanced age of eighty-four, after having realized an ample fortune, the well-earned reward of his industry and ability. To enter into the history of the various applications of the steam-engine to the different branches of industry would carry us beyond the bounds of this work. “To enumerate its present effects,” says a well-known writer on the steam-engine[1], “would be to count almost every comfort and every luxury of life. It has increased the sum of human happiness, not only by calling new pleasures into existence, but by so cheapening former enjoyments as to render them attainable by those who before could never have hoped to share them: the surface of the land, and the face of the waters are traversed with equal facility by its power; and by thus stimulating and facilitating the intercourse of nation with nation, and the commerce of people with people, it has knit together remote countries by bonds of amity not likely to be broken. Streams of knowledge and information are kept flowing between distant centres of population, those more advanced diffusing civilization and improvement among those that are more backward. The press itself, to which mankind owes in so large a degree the rapidity of their improvement in modern times, has had its power and influence increased in a manifold ratio by its union with the steam-engine. It is thus that literature is cheapened, and by being cheapened, diffused; it is thus that reason has taken the place of force, and the pen has superseded the sword; it is thus that war has almost ceased upon the earth, and that the differences which inevitably arise between people and people are for the most part adjusted by peaceful negotiation.” FOOTNOTES [1] Dr. Lardner. HISTORY OF INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES. LENDING AND PAWNBROKING.