There can be no question that Smeaton was "a born mechanic;" and to the end of his days a mechanic he remained, finding his greatest pleasure in mechanical pursuits. It is told of him that when new gates were erected at the entrances to Temple-Newsham Park, near his house at Austhorpe, he offered to supply the design; and they were accordingly constructed and hung after his plans. In the popular opinion, however, his noblest work, surpassing even the Eddystone lighthouse, is the ingenious hydraulic ram, by means of which the water is still raised in the beautiful grounds of Temple-Newsham. Occasionally he diversified his occupations in his atelier, and at his desk, by visits to his smithy. Here he was wont to experiment upon a boiler, the lower part of copper and the upper of lead, which he had fitted up in an adjacent building, for the purpose of ascertaining the evaporative power of different kinds of fuel, and of settling other questions connected with the all-absorbing subject of steam-power. [Sidenote: File _versus_ hammer.] He was on the best of terms with his smith, and if he thought him not very dexterous in the execution of any particular piece of work, he would take the tools himself, and show him how it ought to be done. He was fond of repeating the maxim, "Never let a file come where a hammer can go." [Sidenote: "Queer-fangled things."] When superintending the various works on which he was successively employed, if any workman showed a lack of skill, or seemed unable to proceed, he would at once take his tools and finish the task himself. "You know, sir," said the son of Smeaton's blacksmith to an inquirer, "workmen didn't know much about drawings at that time a-day, and so when Mr. Smeaton wanted any queer-fangled thing making, he'd cut one piece out of wood, and say to my father, 'Now, lad, go make me this,'--and so on for ever so many pieces; and then he'd stick all those pieces o' wood together, and say, 'Now, lad, thou knows how thou made each part, go make it now all in a piece.' And I've heard my father say 'at he's often been cap't to know how he could tell so soon when owt ailed it; for before ever he set his foot at t' bottom of his twisting steps, or before my father could get sight of his face, if t' iron had been wrong, thear'd been an angry word o' some sort, but t' varry next words were, 'Why, my lad, thou o'ud a' made it so and so: now go make another.'" It is related by his daughter, Mrs. Dickson, that early in life Smeaton attracted the notice of the eccentric Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, owing to the remarkable personal likeness between him and their favourite Gay, the poet. Their first acquaintance was made under sufficiently singular circumstances.