s memory that forgot no gem:

For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth.

Twice Watt was requested to undertake the honor of the shrievalty; in
1803 that of Staffordshire, and in 1816 that of Radnorshire, both of
which were positively declined.

He finally found it necessary to declare that he was not a member of the
Church of England, but of the Presbyterian church of Scotland, a reason
which in that day was conclusive.

In 1816, he was in his eighty-first year, and no difficulty seems then
to have been found for excusing him, for it seems the assumption of the
duties was compulsory. It was "the voice of age resistless in its
feebleness."

The day had come when Watt awakened to one of the saddest of all truths,
that his friends were one by one rapidly passing away, the circle ever
narrowing, the few whose places never could be filled becoming fewer, he
in the centre left more and more alone. Nothing grieved Watt so much as
this. In 1794 his partner, Roebuck, fell; in 1799, his inseparable
friend, and supporter in his hour of need, Dr. Black, and also Withering
of the Lunar Society; and in 1802 Darwin "of the silver song," one of
his earliest English friends. In 1804, his brilliant son Gregory died, a
terrible shock. In 1805, his first Glasgow College intimate, Robison;
Dr. Beddoes in 1808; Boulton, his partner, in 1809; Dr. Wilson in 1811;
DeLuc in 1817. Many other friends of less distinction fell in these
years who were not less dear to him. He says, "by one friend's
withdrawing after another," he felt himself "in danger of standing alone
among strangers, the son of later times."

He writes to Boulton on November 23, 1802:

We cannot help feeling, with deep regret,