By the same Author, in 5 vols. crown 8vo, with 9 Steel Portraits and 342 Illustrations on Wood,
LIVES OF THE ENGINEERS.
WITH ANACCOUNT OF THEIR PRINCIPAL WORKS,INCLUDING AHistory of Inland Communication in Britain, and the Invention andIntroduction of the Steam-Engine and Railway Locomotive.A New and Revised Edition.
Vol.I.—Embankments and Canals—Vermuyden, Myddelton, Perry, Brindley.”II.—Harbours, Lighthouses, and Bridges—Smeaton and Rennie.”III.—History of Roads—Metcalfe and Telford.”IV.—The Steam-Engine—Boulton and Watt.”V.—The Locomotive—George and Robert Stephenson.
Embankments and Canals—Vermuyden, Myddelton, Perry, Brindley.
Harbours, Lighthouses, and Bridges—Smeaton and Rennie.
History of Roads—Metcalfe and Telford.
The Steam-Engine—Boulton and Watt.
The Locomotive—George and Robert Stephenson.
⁂Each volume is complete in itself, and may be had separately.————————
“A chapter of English history which had to be written, and which, probably, no one could have written so well. Mr. Smiles has obtained a mass of original materials. It is not too much too say that we now have an Engineers’ Pantheon, with a connected narrative of their successive reclamations from sea, bog, and fen; a history of the growth of the inland communication of Great Britain by means of its roads, bridges, canals, and railways; and a survey of the lighthouses, breakwaters, docks, and harbours constructed for the protection and accommodation of our commerce with the world.”—Times.
“We cannot but refer in passing to the captivating and instructive volumes which Mr. Smiles has devoted to the ‘Lives of the Engineers,’ a record not before attempted of the achievements of a race of men who have conferred the highest honour and the most extensive benefits on their country. ‘Who are the great men of the present age?’ said Mr. Bright in the House of Commons,—‘Not your warriors—not your statesmen; they are your Engineers.’”—Edinburgh Review.
“Mr. Smiles has profoundly studied, and has happily delineated in his lucid and instructive biographies, that remarkable succession of gifted minds which has, not by lucky guesses, but by incessant labour and by lifelong thought, gradually erected that noble example of dominion of man over the earth—the science of Engineering; and we are proud to know that there are men yet among us who can wield the arms of the invincible knights of old, and who will leave no meaner memory behind them.”—Quarterly Review.
“Mr. Smiles may fairly claim the merit of having produced one of the most interesting and instructive works. He has discovered almost unbroken ground, and has worked it with so much skill and success, that his readers will recognise in his volumes an illustration of the truth of Lord Macaulay’s saying, that history, personal or national, may, when properly written, be rendered as interesting as any novel.”—London Review.
“In tracing the history of English engineering from the beginning, Mr. Smiles really gives a history of English civilisation. He has produced a kind of philosophical biography, the progress of discovery and industrial conquest having necessarily a general correspondence with the mental development of the great representatives of man’s external action. We think Mr. Smiles has done what was well worth the doing, with skill, with honesty, with purpose, and with taste.”—Westminster Review.
“There may be many here who have made themselves acquainted with a book that cannot be too widely brought into public notice—I mean the recent publication of a popular author, Mr. Smiles, entitled ‘The Lives of the Engineers.’ There may be those here who have read the Life of Brindley, and perused the record of his discouragement in the tardiness of his own mind, as well as in the external circumstances with which he determined to do battle, and over which he achieved his triumph. There may be those who have read the exploits of the blind Metcalfe, who made roads and bridges in England at a time when nobody else had learned to make them. There may be those who have dwelt with interest on the achievements of Smeaton, Rennie, and Telford. In that book we see of what materials Englishmen are made. These men, who have now become famous among us, had no mechanics’ institute, no libraries, no classes, no examinations to cheer them on their way. In the greatest poverty, difficulties, and discouragements, their energies were found sufficient for their work, and they have written their names in a distinguished page of the history of their country.”—The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone at Manchester.
“I have just been reading a work of great interest, which I recommend to your notice—I mean Smiles’s ‘Lives of the Engineers.’ No more interesting books have been published of late years than those of Mr. Smiles—his ‘Lives of the Engineers,’ his ‘Life of George Stephenson,’ and his admirable little book on ‘Self-Help’—a most valuable manual.”—The Right Hon. Sir Stafford Northcote at Exeter.
“Mr. Smiles has done wisely to link the names of Boulton and Watt together in the volume before us. The more we read of the correspondence between these two great men during the birth of the new motive power, the more we feel convinced that the world has to be thankful for their happy partnership. Boulton seemed by some happy chance to possess all the qualities of mind that were wanting in Watt. . . . From the heaps of dusty ledgers in the counting—house at Soho, the author has drawn the materials for these deeply-interesting lives, and has so handled them as to produce a volume which worthily crowns his efforts in this most interesting, because before untrodden, walk in literature.”—Times.
“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 INENGLAND AND IRELAND.A NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED————————
“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 xixmesiecle 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.
“The work of Mr. Smiles embraces a subject which has never been adequately treated, at least in English literature—the history, namely, of the French and Flemish Protestant refugees in this country, and their descendants.
“Of the powerful influence exercised by this immigration on our industry, commerce, arts, literature, even our usages and modes of thought, few are aware. The subject is by no means a familiar one among ourselves. The whole revolution, so to speak, took place so gradually, the new population amalgamated so readily and thoroughly with the old, that people hardly attached to the phenomena which passed under their eyes their real importance. Mr. Smiles’s account of it is, therefore, admirably calculated to impart, not only new knowledge, but really new ideas, to most of us.
“To readers who love to dwell on heroic vicissitudes rather than on mere details of economical progress, Mr. Smiles’s account of the persecution in France, the sufferings of the many and the marvellous escapes of the few, will prove the most attractive part of his work.
“How this noble army of emigrants for conscience sake—the truest aristocracy, perhaps, which has ever developed itself—gradually and peacefully amalgamated with that mass of the English people which they had done so much to enrich and to instruct, Mr. Smiles has fully shown. He recounts their euthanasia, if such it may be termed, as he does their rise. To one of the great causes of their success, and not in England only, he does ample justice. They were, as a body, extremely well educated; and they jealously transmitted that inheritance, which they had brought from France, to their children. The poorest Huguenot refugee was almost always a cultivated man. Hence their great advantage in the fair race of industry.”—Pall Mall Gazette.
“Mr. Smiles’s book on the ‘Huguenots’ is an improvement on anything he has yet done, and it deserves a success which, by reason of its very merits, we fear it has no chance of attaining. The subject breaks ground that may almost be called fallow. Many chapters of English history, and these not the least interesting or important, are for the first time written, with the care and breadth they deserve, by Mr. Smiles.”—London Review.
Transcriber’s Notes:Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Ditto marks were replaced in the Appendix with the actual words.Page xiii, “Pertinaceous” changed to “Pertinacious” (Pertinacious Rats)Page xiv, “Locustra” changed to “Locusta” (Locusta migratoria)Page xv, “Entomostracea” changed to “Entomostraca” (Bate—Entomostraca—Parasites)Page xvi, “Thompsonii” changed to “Thompsoni” (Couchia Thompsoni)Page xix, List of Illustrations, “Village of Pennan” is actually located after page 258. The list will link to the actual illustration.Page 44, “ask” changed to “asp” (an asp, but it)Page 207, sidenote, “LOCUSTRIA” changed to “LOCUSTA” (LOCUSTA MIGRATORIA)Page 253, word originally split over two lines after the first “con”, “concontributor” changed to “contributor” (afterwards became a contributor)Page 328, “Holothuriadæ” became “Holothuridæ” (of the Holothuridæ family)Page 428, parentheses changed to brackets. ([Edward’s Midge].)Page 429, “Chimaera” changed to “Chimæra” ([Northern Chimæra])Page 432, “oth” changed to “other” ( Two other new species)Page 442, “whch” changed to “which” (it contains which we possess)Page 443, “laboure” changed to “labourer” (example of a labourer)
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Ditto marks were replaced in the Appendix with the actual words.
Page xiii, “Pertinaceous” changed to “Pertinacious” (Pertinacious Rats)
Page xiv, “Locustra” changed to “Locusta” (Locusta migratoria)
Page xv, “Entomostracea” changed to “Entomostraca” (Bate—Entomostraca—Parasites)
Page xvi, “Thompsonii” changed to “Thompsoni” (Couchia Thompsoni)
Page xix, List of Illustrations, “Village of Pennan” is actually located after page 258. The list will link to the actual illustration.
Page 44, “ask” changed to “asp” (an asp, but it)
Page 207, sidenote, “LOCUSTRIA” changed to “LOCUSTA” (LOCUSTA MIGRATORIA)
Page 253, word originally split over two lines after the first “con”, “concontributor” changed to “contributor” (afterwards became a contributor)
Page 328, “Holothuriadæ” became “Holothuridæ” (of the Holothuridæ family)
Page 428, parentheses changed to brackets. ([Edward’s Midge].)
Page 429, “Chimaera” changed to “Chimæra” ([Northern Chimæra])
Page 432, “oth” changed to “other” ( Two other new species)
Page 442, “whch” changed to “which” (it contains which we possess)
Page 443, “laboure” changed to “labourer” (example of a labourer)