Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume II.djvu/225

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that the different features of the place form a stri- kingly-fine whole, both grand and beautiful; the more interesting, when we consider that it is entirely the creation of modern years, formed by the com- bine d operation of taste, science, and wealth, out of a desolate heath, inhabited only by a colony of rabbits. The useful machine we have just mentioned, the steam-engine, was, you know, carried to its present

tate of perfection by Mr. James Watt, one of the partners in the Soho firm, a gentleman who pos-

embraces with equal ease, and to its fullest extent, every subject on which the human intellect can be exercised, from the simplest to the most profound. Fie procured a patent for it in 1768, and seven years afterwards entering into partnership with Mr. Boulton, began to construct, steam-engines at Soho; .since when, the adoption of them has been general ail over the kingdom in mines and manu- factories:, to the incalculable saving of labour and money in the laborious :n\d expensive operations of both. The stupendous power of this machine may be best conceived by animadverting to one ol th m erected a few years since in Cornwall; which worked a pump of eighteen inches diameter, up- wards of six hundred feet high, at the rate of twelve strokes each seven feet long, in one minute.
 * es ;es that rare comprehensiveness of mind, which

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