his, and a
contribution to Sparks's "American Biography," by Col. Charles
Whittlesey, of Ohio, seem quite sufficient to establish the historical
fact that John Fitch was the father of steam-navigation, whoever may
have been its prophets. Though the infant, with the royal blood of
both Neptune and Pluto in its veins, and a brand-new empire waiting to
crown it, fell into a seventeen years' swoon, during which Fitch died,
and the public at large forgot all that he had ever said or done, its
life did not become extinct. It was not created, but revived, by
Fulton, aided by the refreshing effusion of Chancellor Livingston's
money. We did not need a new book to make us more certain of these
facts, but we did need a more thorough biography of John Fitch, and,
with great respect for the industry and faithfulness of Mr. Westcott,
it is our opinion that we do still. He has demonstrated that the
materials for such a work are abundant, and a glance at the mortal
career of Fitch will show him to be an uncommonly interesting subject.

John Fitch was born in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1743. At the age of
five, while his father was absent from home, courting his stepmother,
he heroically extinguished a fire of blazing flax, which would
otherwise have consumed the house, and while he was smarting from his
burns was cruelly beaten by an elder brother, who misapprehended the
case of the little boy, very much as the world did that of the man he
became. The domestic discipline he encountered under the paternal roof
was of the severest New England pattern of those days, and between its
theology and its economy he grew out of shape, like a thrifty pumpkin
between two rocks. He loved to learn, but had few books and little
schooling. His taste tended to mechanism, and he was apprenticed to a
stingy clock-maker, who obliged him to work on his farm and kept him
ignorant of his trade. Getting his liberty at last, he set up
brass-founding, on a capital of twenty shillings, and made money at
it. Then he went into the manufacture of potash, in which he was less
successful. He married a wife who proved more caustic than the potash
and more than a match for his patience. He settled his affairs so as
to leave her all his little property in the most manageable shape, and
left her with two children, to seek a separate fortune in the wide
world. The war of the Revolution found him at Trenton, New Jersey, a
man of some substance, acquired as a silversmith and