I, in particular, have reason to thank God that he has preserved me so well as I am, to so late a period, while the greater part of my contemporaries, healthier and younger men, have passed "the bourne from which no traveller returns." It is, however, a painful contemplation to see so many who were dear to us pass away before us; and our consolation should be, that as Providence has been pleased to prolong our life, we should render ourselves as useful to society as we can while we live. And again, when seventy-six years of age, January, 1812, he writes: On these subjects I can offer no other consolations than what are derived from religion: they have only gone before us a little while, in that path we all must tread, and we should be thankful they were spared so long to their friends and the world. Sir Walter Scott declares: That is the worst part of life when its earlier path is trod. If my limbs get stiff, my walks are made shorter, and my rides slower; if my eyes fail me, I can use glasses and a large print: if I get a little deaf, I comfort myself that except in a few instances I shall be no great loser by missing one full half of what is spoken: _but I feel the loneliness of age when my companions and friends are taken from me._ All his life until retiring from business, Watt's care was to obtain sufficient for the support of himself and family upon the most modest scale. He had no surplus to devote to ends beyond self, but as soon as he retired with a small competence it was different, and we accordingly find him promptly beginning to apply some portion of his still small revenue to philanthropical ends. Naturally, his thoughts reverted first to his native town and the university to which he owed so much. In 1808 he founded the Watt Prize in Glasgow University, saying: Entertaining a due sense of the many favours conferred upon me by the University of Glasgow, I wish to leave them some memorial of my gratitude, and, at the same time, to excite a spirit of inquiry and exertion among the students of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry attending the College; which appears to me the more useful, as the very existence of Britain, as a nation, seems to me, in great measure, to depend upon her exertions in science and in the arts. The University conferred the degree of LL.D. upon him in 1774, and its great engineering laboratory bears his name. In 1816, he made a donation to the town of Greenock for scientific books, stating it to be his intention to form the beginning of a scientific library for the instruction of the youth of Greenock, in the hope of prompting others to add to it, and of rendering his townsmen as eminent for their knowledge as they are for the spirit of enterprise.