his shoulders stooping, and his
chest falling in; his limbs lank and unmuscular, and his complexion
sallow. His intellectual development was magnificent; comparison and
causality immense, with large ideality and constructiveness,
individuality, an enormous concentrativeness and caution.

"He had a broad Scottish accent; gentle, modest, and unassuming
manners; yet, when he entered a room, men of letters, men of
science, nay, military men, artists, ladies, even little children,
thronged round him. Ladies would appeal to him on the best means of
devising grates, curing smoky chimneys, warming their houses, and
obtaining fast colors. I can speak from experience of his teaching
me how to make a dulcimer and improve a Jew's harp."

In the year 1786, Watt and Boulton visited Paris, on the invitation
of the French Government, to superintend the erection of certain
steam-engines, and especially to suggest improvements in the great
hydraulic machine of Marly, which Watt himself designates a
"venerable" work. In Paris Watt made many acquaintances, including
Lavoisier, Laplace, Fourcroy, and others scarcely less eminent; and
while here he discussed with Berthollet a new method of _bleaching_
by chlorides, an invention of the latter which Watt subsequently
introduced into England.

Meanwhile Watt had vigilantly to defend his patents at home, which
were assailed by unworthy and surreptitious rivals as soon as it was
proved that they were pecuniarily valuable. Some of the competing
engines, as Watt himself described them, were simply asthmatic.
"Hornblower's, at Radstock, was obliged to stand still once every
ten minutes to snore and snort." "Some were like Evan's mill, _which
was a gentlemanly mill_; it would go when it had nothing to do, but
it refused to work." The legal proceedings, both in equity and at
common law, which now became necessary, were numerous. One bill of
costs, from 1796 to 1800, amounted to between L5,000 and L6,000; and
the mental and bodily labor, the anxiety and vexation, which were
superadded, involved a fearful tax on the province of Watt's
discoveries.

With the year 1800 came the expiration of the privilege of the
patent of 1769, as extended by the statute of 1775; and also the
dissolution of the original copartnership of Messrs. Boulton and
Watt, then of five-and-twenty years' duration. The contract was
renewed by their sons, the business having become so profitable that
Watt and his children were pr