erially to promote the growth of iron
shipbuilding on the Clyde, but it is equally impossible to trace the
lines of Robert Napier's biography without affording a clue to this
marvellous progress.

On the eighteenth day of June, 1791, Mr. Napier was born in the town of
Dumbarton. His father was a blacksmith, and early imparted to his son a
knowledge of the rudiments of that business, so that Robert was not far
wrong when he quaintly remarked that he was born with the hammer in his
hand. The elder Napier occupied, as his forefathers had done before him,
a prominent position in their little town, being a freeman with a
prosperous business, which enabled him to gratify his anxiety to give
his son the benefits of a sound practical education. Ultimately the
latter was apprenticed to his father with the view of following out the
trade of a smith. When he was twenty years of age, young Robert,
determined to fight his way in a less limited sphere, removed to the
Scottish metropolis, where he was employed by Robert Stevenson, the
eminent lighthouse engineer. Latterly, however, he returned to
Dumbarton, and after spending a short time longer in the service of his
father, he permanently settled down in Glasgow, where he started
business on his own account in the month of May, 1815. We are not aware
that Mr. Napier had at this time any intention of eventually going in
for marine architecture. The prospects of that industry were by no means
so assured and encouraging as they have since become. Bell's _Comet_ had
been launched three years before, but it was still regarded even by
practical men as a doubtful venture. It was one of those "inventions
born before their time," which, according to the Emperor Napoleon III.,
"must necessarily remain useless until the level of the common intellect
rises to comprehend them." Thanks, however, to the co-operation of Mr.
David Napier, a cousin of Robert's, who assisted him in the construction
of the Comet, and took a lively personal interest in the advancement of
steam navigation, Bell was enabled to achieve a permanent triumph, and
the subject of these remarks, from the same cause, had his attention
turned at an early period to the revolution which was being silently but
surely evolved out of Bell's achievement. For some years, however,
Robert Napier had to fight an uphill battle with the world. His first
place of business was on a very moderate scale in Greyfriars Wynd, a
place to which it has