nor has any connivance whatever on the part of Cort been suggested. The Government, however, bound to act with promptitude in such a case, at once adopted extraordinary measures to recover their money. The assignments of Cort's patents, which had been made to Jellicoe in consideration of his advances, were taken possession of, but, strange to say, Samuel Jellicoe, the son of the defaulter, was put in possession of the properties at Fonltey and Gosport and continued to enjoy them, to Cort's exclusion for a period of fourteen years. Notwithstanding this, the patent rights seem never to have been levied by the assignees, and the result was that the whole benefit of Cort's inventions was made over to the ironmasters and to the public, although there seems little reason to doubt, that had they been duly levied, the whole of the debt due to the government would have been paid in the course of a few years. As for Cort himself, on the death of Jellicoe he left his iron works a ruined man. He subsequently made many appeals to Government for the restoration of his patents, and offered to find security for payment of the debt due by his firm to the Crown, but in vain. In 1794 an appeal was made to Mr. Pitt by a number of influential members of parliament, on behalf of the inventor and his destitute family of twelve children, when a pension of 200_l._ was granted to him, which he enjoyed until the year 1800, when, broken in health and spirit, he died at the age of sixty. He was buried in Hampstead Church, where a stone marks the date of his death and is still to be seen; a few years ago it was illegible, but it has been restored by his surviving son Richard Cort. Mr. Smiles thus concludes a long and interesting account of Cort in his 'Industrial Biography:'--"Though Cort died in comparative poverty, he laid the foundations of many gigantic fortunes. He may be said to have been, in a great measure, the author of our modern iron aristocracy, who still manufacture after the processes which he invented or perfected, but for which they never paid him one shilling of royalty. These men of gigantic fortunes have owed much, we might almost say everything, to the ruined projector of 'the little mill at Fonltey.' Their wealth has enriched many families of the older aristocracy, and has been the foundation of several modern peerages. Yet Henry Cort, the rock from which they were hewn, is already all but forgotten; and his surviving children, now aged and infirm, are dependent for their support upon the slender pittance,[52] wrung by repeated entreaty and expostulation, from the state."--_Smiles's Industrial Biography._ London, 1863.--_Mechanics' Magazine_, 1859-60-61. JAMES IVORY, F.R.S., &c. Born 1765. Died September 21, 1842.