Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/232

368 by Mr Henry Bell of Glasgow, when on a visit to the Carron works, waited on Mr Symington, and inspected the boat which he had fitted up for the Forth and Clyde canal. The consequence was, that, in 1807, the former gentleman launched a steam vessel on the Hudson, and, in 1812, Mr Bell another upon Clyde, being respectively the first vessels of the kind used for the service of the public in the new and old hemispheres. Thus, after all the primary difficulties of the invention had been overcome,— when the bark was ready, as it were, to start from the shore, and waited only for the master to give the word for that purpose,—did two individuals, altogether alien to the project, come in and appropriate the honour of launching it into the open sea. Unquestionably, the merit of these individuals in overcoming many practical difficulties, is very considerable; yet it is clear that they were indebted for the idea to the previous inventions and operations of Messrs Miller and Taylor, and that if the latter gentlemen had, in the one instance, been inclined, and in the other able, to carry their project into effect at the proper time, they would not have been anticipated in this part of the honour, any more than in the suggestion of the paddles and the engine.

It appears that Mr Taylor by no means sat tamely by, while Fulton and Bell were reaping the credit due to their labours. Mr Taylor repeatedly urged Mr Miller to renewed exertions, though always without success; kept his claims as well as he could before the public eye ; and, on finding that Mr Symington had obtained a patent, forced him into an agreement to share the profits, none of which, however, were ever realized. When the vast importance of steam navigation had become fully established, the friends of Mr Taylor, who was not in prosperous circumstances, urged upon him the propriety of laying his claims before the government, and soliciting a reward suitable to the magnitude and importance of the discovery. At last, in 1824, he was induced to draw up a statement of his concern in the invention of steam navigation, which he printed and addressed to Sir Henry Parnell, chairman of a select committee of the House of Commons, upon steam boats. He hoped that this narrative might be the means of obtaining from the government some remuneration for the incalculable services he had performed to mankind; but it had no such effect. Bowed down by infirmities, and the fruits of a long life of disappointments, this ingenious man died on the 18th of September, 1825, in the sixty-eighth year of his age.

TELFORD,, an eminent engineer and constructor of public works, was born about the year 1755, in the parish of Westerkirk in Dumfriesshire. His outset in life was strikingly humble in comparison with its close. He began the world as a working stone-mason in his native parish, and for a long time was only remarkable for the neatness with which he cut the letters upon those frail sepulchral memorials which "teach the rustic moralist to die." His occupation fortunately afforded a greater number of leisure hours than what are usually allowed by such laborious employments, and these young Telford turned to the utmost advantage in his power. Having previously acquired the elements of learning, he spent all his spare time in poring over such volumes as. fell within his reach, with no better light in general than what was afforded by the cottage fire. Under these circumstances the powers of his mind took a direction not uncommon among rustic youths; he became a noted rhmyster in the homely style of Ramsay and Fergusson, and, while still a very young man, contributed verses to Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine, under the unpretending signature of "Eskdale Tarn." In one of these compositions, which was addressed to Burns, he sketched his own character, and hinted his own ultimate fate—