t large, and particularly of an
extensive class of coal and mine proprietors and iron masters, who have
derived, and are still deriving, great wealth from this important
discovery; and who, in the spirit of grateful acknowledgment, have
pronounced it worthy of a crown of gold, or a monumental record on the
spot where the discovery was first made.

"At an advanced period of life, such considerations are soothing and
satisfactory. Many under similar circumstances have not, in their own
lifetime, had that measure of justice awarded to them by their country
to which they were equally entitled. I accept it, however, as a boon
justly due to me, and as an equivalent in some degree for that
laborious course of investigation which I had prescribed for myself,
and which, in early life, was carried on under circumstances of
personal exposure and inconvenience, which nothing but a frame of iron
could have supported. They atone also, in part, for that
disappointment sustained in early life by the speculative habits of one
partner, and the constitutional nervousness of another, which
eventually occasioned my separation from the Calder Iron Works, and
lost me the possession of extensive tracts of Black Band iron-stone,
which I had secured while the value of the discovery was known only to
myself."

Mr. Mushet published the results of his laborious investigations in a
series of papers in the Philosophical Magazine,--afterwards reprinted
in a collected form in 1840 under the title of "Papers on Iron and
Steel." These papers are among the most valuable original
contributions to the literature of the iron-manufacture that have yet
been given to the world. They contain the germs of many inventions and
discoveries in iron and steel, some of which were perfected by Mr.
Mushet himself, while others were adopted and worked out by different
experimenters. In 1798 some of the leading French chemists were
endeavouring to prove by experiment that steel could be made by contact
of the diamond with bar-iron in the crucible, the carbon of the diamond
being liberated and entering into combination with the iron, forming
steel. In the animated controversy which occurred on the subject, Mr.
Mushet's name was brought into considerable notice; one of the subjects
of his published experiments having been the conversion of bar-iron
into steel in the crucible by contact with regulated proportions of
charcoal. The experiments which he made in connect