“Boulton was the complement of Watt’s active intelligence. . . . His is a memory of which the leaders of industry in Great Britain may well be proud. His virtues were the common virtues which render the English character respected throughout the world, but in him they were combined with admirable harmony, and were unsullied by any of those vices which too frequently degrade the reputation of our countrymen. We cannot read of Mr. Boulton’s grand struggle to bring the steam-engine into further use without a feeling of pure admiration. . . . We lay down this volume with a feeling of pride and admiration that England had the honour of producing at the same time two such men, whose labours will continue to benefit mankind to the remotest generation, and with gratitude to the distinguished biographist who preserves for the instruction of the times to come, pictures of them so full of life and reality.”—Daily News.
“That Mr. Smiles’s will be the standard life of the great engineer is simply the necessity of his greater art as an industrial biographer. His skill in weaving together anecdote and description, representations of what was known with a distinct specification of what was contributed by his hero; his dramatic power, in this volume especially, exhibited in the contrast of the two partners,—the sanguine, speculative character of Boulton; the anxious, morbid, cautious temper of Watt,—one full of hope in the very darkest circumstances, the other full of fear in the brightest,—give the volume a wonderful charm. The life of Watt is a great epic of discovery: the narrative of it by Mr. Smiles is an artistic and finished poem.”—British Quarterly Review.
“We venture to think that this, Mr. Smiles’s most recent work, will achieve even a higher popularity than those which have preceded it. We are impressed by this book with the fact that hitherto, however highly public speakers and writers may have lauded Watt and his achievements, the general public have really known little or nothing of this great man’s history, life, and character. These are admirably and graphically depicted in the volume before us; in the preparation of which the author appears to have had access to a vast mass of authentic documents, of which he has made excellent use.”—Observer.
Just Published, by the same Author, in Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
THE HUGUENOTS:
THEIR SETTLEMENTS, CHURCHES, AND INDUSTRIES IN
ENGLAND AND IRELAND.
A NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED
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“The cunning of Mr. Smiles’s hand never fails him. He has chosen the prosaic side of Huguenot history, and has made it as fascinating as a romance. He has not essayed to depict the religious heroism or the social tragedy of the Huguenot story—he has restricted himself to the economical influence of its migrations, and he has made the statistics and genealogies—of which his work is full—as interesting as Homer’s lists of ships and heroes, or as Milton’s array of the demigods of hell. The process seems very simple and easy, but it can be saved from utter dreariness only by consummate art. Mr. Smiles has pursued his investigations with a laborious minuteness worthy of the Statistical Society and of the Heralds’ College; and yet it is as impossible to skip a page, as in reading his life of Stephenson.”—British Quarterly.
“Avec un rare déssintéressement national et un sentiment de justice qu’on ne saurait trop encourager, un écrivain Anglais vient aujourd’hui rendre aux étrangers ce que la riche et laborieuse Angleterre du xixme siecle doit aux étrangers. M. Smiles est l’historien de la vapeur et de toutes les découvertes utiles; ses héros sont les inventeurs, les artisans célèbres, les ingénieurs, tous ceux, en un mot, qui out dérobé á la nature un secret ou un force pour étendre le règne de l’homme sur la matière. Les conquêtes de l’industrie et du commerce le préoccupent bien autrement que les victoires des armées Anglaises. . . . Par la tournure de ses idées et l’ordre de ses études, M. Smiles était done préparé à traiter cet interessant sujet,—la naissance des arts utiles chez un grand peuple qui, à l’origine, n’avait pas d’industrie.”—Revue des Deux Mondes.