"But Catullus was a heathen; let us hope that he (G.) is now rejoicing in another and a better world, free from our cares, griefs, and infirmities. Some one has said, I shall not wholly die; and Gregory's name, his merits and virtues, will live at least as long as those do who knew him. You are not, from this, to conceive that we give way to grief; on the contrary, you will find us as cheerful as we ought to be, and as much disposed to enjoy the friends we have left as ever; but we should approach to brutes if we had no regrets." Mr. Watt, at the date of these letters, had entered on his seventieth year, a period after which great mental exertions are rarely made. [Pg313] In the summer of 1819, symptoms of indisposition manifested themselves which soon rendered Watt aware of his approaching dissolution. "I am very sensible," said he to his afflicted friends, "of the attachment you show me, and I hasten to thank you for it, as I am now come to my last illness." He died on the 25th of August, 1819. His remains were deposited in the church of Handsworth, near his estate of Heathfield. His son has raised over his grave a Gothic chapel, in the centre of which is placed a statue by Chantrey. The personal character of Watt could not fail to excite the admiration and the love of those distinguished persons, whose pride and happiness it was to be admitted to a share in the friendship of the great engineer. Among these were reckoned some of the men who will leave upon the present age the deepest and most lasting impressions of their genius, and such persons have bequeathed to posterity the sentiments with which he inspired them. We cannot here do more justice to the personal character of the subject of this notice than by repeating the portraiture of it which has been given by three of the most distinguished of his friends, and of the most illustrious men of the present age. At a meeting convened in 1824, for erecting a monument to Watt, Lord Brougham pronounced a speech, from which we extract the following observations:—