two hundred thousand pounds, which was to be
raised in shares of fifty pounds each.*

* One of Winsor's shares is in the possession of
the writer.

Winsor was triumphant at last; but he
was only a sham discoverer, and one feels
no interest in his success. All the first
attempts at gas- lighting, by the persons who
afterwards formed the Chartered Gas
Company, were made in Pall-Mall. But after
they became a legalised body, they
purchased the lease of a large wharf and premises
in Cannon-row, Westminster; however, they
found the place inconvenient, and were
afterwards obliged to abandon it. Their experiments
at this place were very expensive, and absorbed
nearly the whole of their first deposits of ten
pounds per share on the four thousand of which
the company consisted.

After having expended so much with Mr.
Winsor, and the first deposits being exhausted, with
little apparent effect, the proprietors became
dissatisfied; but although their labours had
been attended with no profit, and with very
little fame, they steadily pursued their plans,
and made the necessary purchases for their
different stations. They first obtained that in
Peter-street, Westminster, afterwards that in
Curtain-road, and lastly that in Brick-lane.

Still the company went on in full belief of
their own principles, and laying down boldly
the great central mains that were certain soon
to be required. In 1813 they appointed Mr.
Samuel Clegg as their engineer, and under his
efforts daylight began slowly to dawn. Yet, still
the ten-pound shares would only sell for two, and
the cry was for more and more money. Mr.
Clegg's experiments were not always at first
successful. The mains he laid down were too small.
In 1813 the terrorists and conservative croakers
were delighted by an explosion happening at the
Westminster Gas-works, which knocked down
two nine-inch walls, scorched Mr. Clegg's hair,
and blew off his hat. A committee of the
Royal Society was appointed to inquire into
this accident, and the report of that body gave
confidence to the public, and led to improvement
in gas apparatus.

Gas now flamed up brighter. The City of
London Company was started, and two others
projected. In 1816, the old company applied for
power to augment their capital by two hundred
thousand pounds more. This they obtained under
restrictions from the Home Department. Soon
after, Mr. Clegg, inventor of the gas-meter,
encouraged customers, and helped to preserve
the gas companies from fraud. Great prejudice
against gas, however, still continued. On the
debate on the gas bill, June 11, 1816, the tone of
the enlightened House was against the certain
injury it would do to the whale fisheries, one of
the great nurseries of our navy. Alderman
Atkins complained of the exclusive privileges
claimed by this bill, and that the measure was
likely to ruin the hardy race of men employed
in the southern and Greenland whale fisheries,
in each of which a million of money and above
one hundred ships were employed. If the bill
were passed, it would throw out of employ ten
thousand seamen, and above ten thousand rope-
makers, sail-makers, mast-makers, &c.,
connected with that trade.

In the House of Lords, the danger of gas
monopoly, now so bitterly felt in London, was
clearly seen. The Earl of Harrowby observed
that, although the bill did not in terms give a
monopoly, yet the effect of it, by giving the
means of raising an additional capital of two
hundred thousand pounds, would be in all
probability to enable the company to destroy
competition, and secure to themselves a monopoly. He
did not make this objection with a view to the
whale fisheries, admitting that they ought not
to stand in the way of improvements in science,
but with a view to this beautiful and excellent
light itself, which was now furnished in different
quarters of the town by private companies, and
this corporation would, by this bill, possess the
means of extinguishing those private companies
and securing to themselves a monopoly. The
old ignorant preference of class-interests over
the interests of mankind at large.

In 1814, when ihe Royal Society visited
the London Gas Works, there was only one
gasometer, holding fourteen thousand cubic feet
of gas. When Sir William Congreve reported
on them in 1822, the Peter-street station alone
was producing annually one hundred and eleven
million three hundred and eighty-four thousand
cubic feet of gas. There were annually used
in London three hundred and ninety-seven
million cubic feet, lighting sixty-one thousand
two hundred and five private and seven
thousand two hundred and sixty-eight street-lamps.
This did not include several private
companies. Yet gas was still so little used in the
poorer districts, that in the Whitechapel works
two large canvas bags were used as gasometers.

In 1827, the number of public gas
companies in the United Kingdom amounted to
two hundred. The young giant grew fast.
The gas-pipes in and round London now
extend over upwards of two thousand miles, and
are still extending as fast as the feelers of Victor
Hugo's terrible sea-monster.

What became of Winsor we do not know.
It is certain that he became rich, but was
probably elbowed out, with all his bluster and
pretension, when grave, thoughtful, practical
merchants took up the question, and began to
distinctly work out some new road to wealth.
It was only the other day that, pacing silently
down the solemnly yet vulgar Avenue des
Maréchaux at Père la Chaise, we carne upon
his pompous tomb, arched and ornamented in
the cold sham Greek manner, and crowned
with a huge bronze tripod surmounted by gilt
flames: the tomb of a charlatan, buried in the
charlatan manner.

In 1792 the blue gas-flame first sprang
hissing up to do real work for man, when Mr.
Murdoch applied a light to the pungent coal
spirit. It is now 1867, and we are still far