always supposed, had a permanently bad effect on his constitution, and to which he imputed much of his subsequent ill health. The accident did the machinery very little injury; but they were obliged to build the boat almost entirely anew. She was completed in July; her length was sixty-six feet, and she was eight feet wide. Early in August, Mr. Fulton addressed a letter to the French National Institute, inviting them to witness a trial of his boat, which was made in their presence, and in the presence of a great multitude of the Parisians. The experiment was entirely satisfactory to Mr. Fulton, though the boat did not move altogether with as much speed as he expected. But he imputed her moving so slowly to the extremely defective fabrication of the machinery, and to imperfections which were to be expected in the first experiment with so complicated a machine, but which he saw might be easily remedied. Such entire confidence did he acquire from this experiment, that immediately afterwards he wrote to Messrs. Watt and Boulton, of Birmingham, ordering certain parts of a steam-engine to be made for him and sent to America. He did not disclose to them for what purpose the engine was intended, but his directions were such as would produce the parts of an engine that might be put together within a compass suited to a boat. Mr. Fulton then designed to return to America immediately; but, as we have seen, he first visited England, and it is probable that he then gave new orders on this subject, as we find that the engine which was employed in the first American Fulton boat was of the manufacture of Messrs. Watt and Boulton, but it did not arrive in America till long after the time of which we are speaking. Mr. Livingston also wrote immediately after this experiment to his friends in America, and through their interference, an Act was passed by the Legislature of the State of New York, on the 5th of April, 1803, by which the rights and exclusive privileges of navigating all the waters of that State, by vessels propelled by fire or steam, granted to Mr. Livingston by the Act of 1798, were extended to Mr. Livingston and Mr. Fulton for the term of twenty years from the date of the new Act. By this law, the time for producing proof of the practicability of propelling by steam a boat of twenty tons’ capacity, at the rate of four miles an hour, with wind against the ordinary current of the Hudson River, was extended for a period of two years. And by a subsequent law the time was enlarged to April, 1807.