of Solomon's House, or the College of the Six Days' Works; and
among the various buildings appropriated to this institution, he
describes a gallery destined to contain the statues of
inventors. He does not disdain to place in it not only the
inventor of one of the greatest instruments of science, but the
discoverer of the use of the silkworm, and of other still more
humble contrivances for the comfort of man. What place would
Lord Bacon have assigned in such a gallery to the statue of Mr.
Watt? Is it too much to say, that, considering the magnitude of
the discoveries, the genius and science necessary to make them,
and the benefits arising from them to the world, that statue
must have been placed at the head of those of all inventors in
all ages and nations. In another part of his writings the same
great man illustrates the dignity of useful inventions by one of
those happy allusions to the beautiful mythology of the
ancients, which he often employs to illuminate as well as to
decorate reason. "The dignity," says he, "of this end of
endowment of man's life with new commodity appeareth, by the
estimation that antiquity made of such as guided thereunto; for
whereas founders of states, lawgivers, extirpators of tyrants,
fathers of the people, were honored but with the titles of
demigods, inventors were ever consecrated amongst the gods
themselves."

The Earl of Aberdeen says:

It would ill become me to attempt to add to the eulogy which you
have already heard on the distinguished individual whose genius
and talents we have met this day to acknowledge. That eulogy has
been pronounced by those whose praises are well calculated to
confer honor, even upon him whose name does honor to his
country. I feel in common with them, although I can but ill
express that intense admiration which the bare recollection of
those discoveries must excite, which have rendered us familiar
with a power before nearly unknown, and which have taught us to
wield, almost at will, perhaps the mightiest instrument ever
intrusted to the hands of man. I feel, too, that in erecting a
monument to his memory, placed, as it may be, among the
memorials of kings, and heroes, and statesmen, and philosophers,
that it will be then in its proper place; and most in its proper
place, if in the midst of those who hav