About the year 1785, Henry Cort, iron-master, of Gosport, after many years of patient and wearisome research, of anxious thought, and indefatigable experiment, in which he spent a private fortune of some L20,000, perfected a couple of inventions of priceless value. The first was the process of converting pig iron into wrought iron by the flame of pit coal in a puddling furnace, thus dispensing with the use of charcoal,--the cost and scarcity of which had before formed such a dead weight on the trade, and placed us at such a disadvantage compared with Sweden and Russia. The second was a further process for drawing the iron into bars by means of grooved rollers. Till then, this operation had to be performed with hammer and anvil, and was very tedious and laborious. The new system not only reduced the cost and labour of producing iron to one-twentieth of what they were previously, but greatly improved the quality of the article produced. It is not easy to estimate all that Henry Cort's inventions have done for this country. Without them we should have lost an overflowing and inexhaustible source of national wealth, and, moreover, large sums would have been taken out of the country in the purchase of wrought metal; we should never have been able to give full scope to the great mechanical inventions brought forth towards the close of the last, and the opening of the present century; we should have been debarred from taking rank as the great engineers and engine-makers for the rest of the world. The direct gain to this country from the inventions of Henry Cort, which enabled us to work up our own iron, has been calculated as equal by this time to not less than a hundred millions; and it is hardly possible to exaggerate the benefits which it has conferred. Lord Sheffield's prophecy, that the adoption of these processes would be worth more to Britain than a dozen colonies, may be said to have been fulfilled.