the first Duke of Leeds, was the mother of the first Earl of Pornfret; and the Duke died at his grandson's seat of Easton Hall. The Osbornes drew the beginning of their prosperity from commerce. In the early part of the sixteenth century there lived a wealthy cloth-worker, or manufacturer of woollens, in one of the houses that then, and down to a much later date, stood upon London Bridge, forming continuous ranges all the way along, and giving it the appearance of an ordinary street. It seems to have been accounted rather a preferable, almost genteel, locality; it was the grand entry to the metropolis, by which passed, of necessity, all those pomps and shows, and processions of state and ceremony, which made so important a part of the life of our forefathers; nowhere was there more stir and activity of every kind, and at all hours; and for good air, and plenty of it, there could have been no street comparable to the bridge anywhere else in London. The very sound of the river beneath was considered musical and soothing; it is related that those who had been used to it could not easily fall asleep at night without having it in their ear. In front of the houses flowed from morning to night an unceasing current of the busiest and most various humanity; and the back windows had another kind of cheerfulness of their own,—a spacious and open prospect over town, country, and sky, with a full share of both the sunshine and the breeze whenever there was any of either. Nor would the merry water below, glancing in the light, usually excite any feeling of fear; any constant or familiar danger, however great, loses its power over the imagination; Damocles himself would have come to look with indifference at the sword suspended over his head after a little while. But the glittering river did not the less for that ever and anon give proof of what a serpent it was in subtlety, as well as in brightness and beauty. One day, in the house of the rich cloth-merchant, a servant-maid leant out of one of those high back casements, holding an infant, her master's daughter and only child, in her arms, when, in one of its bounds of delight, it suddenly sprung from her grasp, and, dropping into the rushing tide, would have been lost, but for an apprentice of the

merchant's named Edward Osborne, who instantly leaping in after it, caught hold of it, and brought it safe ashore. Perhaps he was at the window along with the servant girl, and had not been without his share in occasioning the accident; or he may have been below in a boat, or standing on the river bank, and his known face, when the infant was held out to him, may have been the attraction that fascinated the little infant. In fashioning the circumstances of the exploit, the imagination is left free to glide, like the river, "at its own sweet will;" for only the main fact has been transmitted.

The incident is said to have happened about the year 1536. It may have been some sixteen or eighteen years after this, that the young lady thus miraculously preserved was given in marriage by her grateful and right-minded father, and, let us hope, not without her own willing acquiescence, to him to whose gallantry she owed her life. Her hand, we are told, was asked by several suitors of rank; mention is made in particular of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who must have been George, the sixth Earl, afterwards married to Elizabeth Hardwick; but the worthy cloth. worker kept steady to his maxim, "Osborne saved her, and Osborne shall enjoy her." Sir William Hewet, as he eventually became, who was Lord Mayor in 1559, and died in 1566, is said to have left an estate of six thousand a year. Edward Osborne, who in due time received the honour of knighthood, was elected Lord Mayor in 1582, and one of the members for the city three years later, and lived till 1591. He had lost Anne Hewet, and married again; but this first wife was the mother of his son, Sir Hewet Osborne, who distinguished himself as a soldier, and was the father of Sir Edward Osborne, baronet, who was the father of the first Duke of Leeds. Strype, who first told the story in print, had it from a reverend John Hewet, or Hewyt, probably a connexion of the great cloth-worker, to whom it had been related by his grace.

Strype observes that the picture of Sir William in his robes of office as Lord Mayor was still preserved by the Leeds family at their seat of Kiveton House, in Yorkshire; they value it, he

oddly adds, at two hundred pounds. Pennant describes the picture, which he had seen at Kiveton, as a half-length on board." Hewet's dress, he says, is "a black gown furred, a red vest and sleeve, a gold chain, and a bonnet."

Watt in his Garret.

SAMUEL SMILES.

MR SMILES, a native of Scotland, born about 1812, has taken a high position as a writer, by the dedication of his pen chiefly to the records of the progress of the great industries of our country. Interesting especially to professional engineers and mechanical inventors, his biographical notices have a charm for all readers, in exhibiting the triumphs of the great principle of "Self Help." This is the title of Mr Smiles's most popular little volume. In 1852, Mr Smiles became secretary to the South Eastern Railway, a situation of great trust, and requiring no common energy and skill. "The Lives of the Engineers" is his most elaborate work. The "Lives of Boulton and Watt," from which our extract is taken, appeared in 1865.]

To the close of his life Watt continued to take great pleasure in inventing. It had been the pursuit of his life, and in old age it became his hobby. "Without a hobby-horse," said he, "what is life?" He proceeded to verify his old experiments, and to live over again the history of his inventions. When Mr Kennedy of Manchester asked him, at one of his last visits to Heathfield, if he had been able, since his retirement from business, to discover anything new in the steam-engine, he replied, "No; I am devoting the remainder of my life to perfect its details, and to ascertain whether in any respect I have been wrong."

But he did not merely confine himself to verifying his old inventions. He also contrived new ones. One of the machines that occupied his leisure hours for many years was his machine for copying statuary. We find him busy with it in 1810, and he was still working upon it in the year of his death, nearly ten years later. The principle of the machine was to make a cutting tool or drill travel over the work to be executed in like ratio with the motion of a guide-point placed upon the bust to be copied. It

worked, as it were, with two hands; the one feeling the pattern, the other cutting the material into the required form. The object could be copied either of the full size, or reduced with the most perfect accuracy to any less size that might be required. In preparing the necessary tools, Watt had the able assistance of his friend Murdock, who was always ready with his kindly sugges tions and criticisms. In January 1813 Watt wrote him—“ I have done a little figure of a boy lying down and holding out one arm very successfully; and another boy, about six inches high, naked, and holding out both his hands, his legs also being separate. But I have been principally employed in making drawings for a complete machine, all in iron, which has been a very serious job, as invention goes on very slowly with me now. When you come home, I shall thank you for your criticisms and assistance."

The materials in which Watt executed his copies of statuary were various-marble, jet, alabaster, ivory, plaster of Paris, and mahogany. Some of the specimens we have seen at Heathfield are of exquisite accuracy and finish, and show that he must have brought his copying-machine to a remarkable degree of perfection before he died. There are numerous copies of medallions of his friends-of Dr Black, De Luc, and Dr Priestley; but the finest of all is a reduced bust of himself, being an exact copy of Chantrey's original plaster-cast. The head and neck are beautifully finished, but there the work has stopped, for the upper part of the chest is still in the rough. Another exquisite work, than which Watt never executed a finer, is a medallion of Locke in ivory, marked "January 1812." There are numerous other busts, statuettes, medallions-some finished, others half executed, and apparently thrown aside, as if the workman had been dissatisfied with his work, and waited, perhaps, until he had introduced some new improvement in his machine.

Watt took out no patent for the invention, which he pursued, as he said, merely as "a mental and bodily exercise." Neither did he publish it—but went on working at it for several years before his intentions to construct such a machine had become known. When he had made considerable progress with it, he

learned, to his surprise, that a Mr Hawkins, an ingenious person in his neighbourhood, had been long occupied in the same pursuit.

The proposal was then made to him that the two inventors should combine their talents and secure the invention by taking out a joint patent. But Watt had already been too much worried by patents to venture on taking out another at his advanced age. He preferred prosecuting the invention at his leisure, merely as an amusement; and the project of taking out a patent for it was accordingly abandoned. It may not be generally known that this ingenious invention of Watt has since been revived and applied, with sundry modifications, by our cousins across the Atlantic, in fashioning wood and iron in various forms; and powerful copying-machines are now in regular use in the Government works at Enfield, where they are employed in rapidly, accurately, and cheaply manufacturing gunstocks.

Watt carried on the operations connected with this invention for the most part in his garret, a room immediately under the roof at the kitchen end of the house at Heathfield and ap proached by a narrow staircase. It is a small room, low in the ceiling, and lighted by a low, broad window, looking into the shrubbery. The ceiling, though low, inclines with the slope of the roof on three sides of the room, and, being close to the slates, the place must necessarily have been very hot in summer, and very cold in winter. A stove was placed close to the door, for the purpose of warming the apartment, as well as enabling the occupant to pursue his experiments, being fitted with a sand-bath and other conveniences. But the stove must have been insufficient for heating the garret in very cold weather, and hence we find him occasionally informing his correspondents that he could not proceed further with his machine until the weather had become milder.

His foot-lathe was fixed close to the window, fitted with all the appliances for turning in wood and metal fifty years since; while a case of drawers fitted into the recess on the left-hand side of the room, contained a large assortment of screws, punches, cutters, taps, and dies. Here were neatly arranged and stowed