At length the difficulties inseparable from such a task were so far overcome, and this enormous labour was so far completed, that a coloured map of the strata of England and Wales was submitted to the consideration of the Society of Arts, supported by various testimonials of its general accuracy and value, in April and May, 1815. The result was the award of the premium of £50, which had been in vain offered for very many years for a work of this description—a reward which Mr. Smith might have claimed long ago, had not an honest desire to produce his work complete withheld the attempt. The map was published on the 1st of August, 1815, dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks, and from that hour the fame of its author as a great original discoverer in English geology was secured. Would that this epoch of his revived and enlarged reputation had also been the dawn of more prosperous fortunes, or that, satisfied with the degree in which he had accomplished his gigantic task, he had left to others the completion of his work, and devoted himself for a time to even the humblest of those professional labours by which he had been at least supported through oppressive difficulties, and by which he must have already grown comparatively rich but for the incessant drain of money in following up discoveries which no living man could reasonably hope to complete. Science, indeed, is a mistress whose golden smiles are not often lavished on poor and enthusiastic suitors. The time for a strenuous exertion was indeed come. Geology had kept him poor by consuming all his professional gains; the neglect of his employers too often left these unpaid; in such a condition one unfortunate step was ruin, and that step was made. On the property which he had purchased near Bath, and which he had greatly improved, he was tempted to lay a railway for bringing the freestone of Comb down to the Coal Canal, to open new quarries of this stone, and to establish new machinery for cutting and shaping it for buildings. The project, which looked well at first, failed utterly by the unexpected deficiency of the stone, on whose good quality the whole success depended. The abandonment of this cherished scheme was followed by the compulsory sale of the still more cherished property, a load of debt remained to be discharged, and the miserable effects fell heavily on others besides himself. But there were not wanting persons of station, knowledge, and humanity, who, esteeming Mr. Smith and admiring his solitary and ceaseless industry, exerted themselves to save him from the sad fate which seemed to await him.