It was Newcomen, not Watt, who gave us the train of mechanism that we now call the steam engine. It is to Newcomen, rather than Watt, that we owe the highest honors as an inventor in this series of the most important of all the products of the inventive genius of mankind. Newcomen brought into existence a new, the modern, type of engine, and effected the greatest revolution that has been recorded in the history of the arts. Without Newcomen, there might have been no Watt; without Watt, there very possibly may not even yet have been brought into existence that giant of our time, whose mighty powers are employed more effectively than ever those of Aladdin's genii, in building palaces, in transporting men and material, in doing the work of the whole world; promoting the welfare of the race, in a single century, more than had all the forces of matter and mind together in the whole previous history of the world. Newcomen laid down a foundation beneath our whole economic system, out of sight, almost, but the essential base, nevertheless, on which Watt and his successors have carried up the great superstructure which seems to us to-day so imposing; which is so tremendous in magnitude, importance, and result. If to any one man could be assigned the credit, it is Newcomen who is to be considered the inventor of the steam engine. James Watt, indisputably the great inventor that he was, found the steam engine ready to his hand, applied himself to its improvement, and made it substantially what it is to-day. His most important work, the most unique service performed by him, was, however, that of its adaptation and introduction to do the work of the world. James Watt was the inaugurator of the era of refinement of the machine already invented, and the greatest of its builders and distributors. His inventions were all directed to the improvement of its details, and his labors to its introduction and its application to the myriad tasks awaiting it. By the hands of Watt it was made to pump water, to spin, to weave, to drive every mill; and he it was who gave it the form demanded by Stephenson, by Fulton, by the whole industrial world, for use on railway and steamboat, and in mill and factory, throughout the civilized countries of the globe. It was this great mechanic who showed how it might be made to do its work with least expense, with highest efficiency, with greatest regularity, with utmost concentration of power. The grand secret of his success was historical and economic, as much as scientific and mechanical. He brought out his inventions just when the world was economically and historically ready for them. The age of authority was past, that of freedom was come; the period of political and ecclesiastical tyranny was gone by, and that of the spontaneous development of man was arrived. The great invention was offered to a world ready and needing it, and, more than all, competent, for the first time in history, to make and use it.