out useful projects which others carried from
him and applied. There was a machine for
biscuit-baking which was his, and which a
baker at Doncaster made a fortune by. None
of his inventions did his open and guileless
nature think of keeping secret; not a few of
them, indeed, when once thrown off his
thoughts by other fancies working there, he
would afterwards even fail to recognise for
his own.

"I remember him," says the son of his old
friend Crabbe, alluding to the visits he would
at this time occasionally make to the poet by
way of holiday, to discuss spinning by looms
and the spinning of verses. "Few persons
could tell a story so well, no man make more
of a trite one. I can just remember him;
the portly, dignified old gentleman of the last
generation, grave and polite, but full of
humour and spirit." And pleasant it is, with
that picture of him, to conjure up the portly
polite figure side by side with his most
frequent companion at this period of his life
—a young, thin, eager, restless American, once
student of art under Benjamin West, since
more resolute student in civil-engineering,
and daily debater with Cartwright of the all
interesting question, Whether practicable to
move vessels by steam?  For daily, at
Marylebone Fields, the famous Robert Fulton was
now to be seen; and Cartwright's daughter
long remembered the vivacity of spirit with
which he would sit by her father's side,
drawing perpetual plans of paddle-wheels,
while Cartwright himself contrived modes as
numberless of bringing steam to act upon
them, these latter finally taking shape in
''the model of a boat which, being wound up
like a clock, moved on the water in a highly
satisfactory manner." Poor Fulton died early,
though not till he had launched the first
steam-boat on the American waters; but
before Cartwright died, steamers were
regularly navigating every part of our English
Channel, "and I must own," said the good old
man, after watching the first Ramsgate boat,
"I felt no little gratification in reflecting on
the share I had in contributing to the
exhibition."

Meanwhile his worldly troubles had
become greatly more imminent and pressing;
for, while his power-loom and wool-combing
inventions had been silently forcing their way,
his property in them had also been invaded,
and continual thefts of his patents rendered it
almost impossible to continue the working
of his mills for the benefit of his creditors.
After some anxious years, however, his
indisputable and sole right to his own discoveries
was affirmed, witli much complimentary
tribute to his inventive genius, in a
celebrated judgment by Lord Eldon; and fortified
by this authority he yielded to the
importunity of his friends, and memorialized
Parliament for such extension of the right,
of which the exclusive exercise was thus at
last assured to him, as might help to
remunerate his hitherto unrewarded labours. He
described himself in this memorial as the
author of various mechanical inventions of
great admitted utility to the manufactures of
this country, but the labour of whose many
anxious years, fruitful in benefit to the public,
had brought himself no other reward than
barren reputation accompanied by ruined
fortunes.

Patiently waiting the result of his petition
so far as it might affect his future, he yet
could not bring himself to suspend his master-
passion for experiment; but as though driven
for a time from the manufacturing field, he
now indulged it in that of agriculture. In
1801 he got a prize from the Agricultural
Board for a practical essay, and soon after
received from the Duke of Bedford an appointment
to superintend an experimental farm
at Woburn. In 1803, a new three-furrow
plough got him the silver medal of the
Society of Arts. Next year the Agricultural
Board made him an honorary member; and
in the two following years gave him their
gold medal for experiments in manure, and
their silver medal for an essay on the culture
of potatoes. Walpole said of Chatham's
popularity that it rained gold boxes, and wo
might as certainly say of Cartwright's inventive
faculty that at least it rained gold and
silver medals.

The engagement at Woburn, too, proved
happily something more substantial. He
found friends as well as patrons in that
princely home. He became the Duke's
domestic chaplain, as well as superintendent of
the experimental farm; and from the early
intelligence of the Duke's third son there
flashed out at once upon the brave old
man a quick and true feeling for all that
was noble or true, to which his own nature
warmly responded. Their friendship began
in play, and ended in admiration as marked
and full of sympathy as could possibly consist
with such difference of years. "When I went
to Woburn," the old man afterwards wrote,
describing the steam-boat model he had
constructed for Fulton," I gave it to Lord John
Russell, then about ten or eleven years old, as
a plaything. It went by clockwork; and Lord
John used frequently to amuse himself with
setting it afloat on the stew-ponds in the
garden." In the next year we find him
publishing a volume of verses, of which Lord
John receives the dedication; and up to the
year of his death, it is touching to see the
eager and trembling fervour with which he
follows each successive step in the young
statesman's public life.

From that happy interval at Woburn,
indeed, may be traced such brighter fortune
as gilded the old man's declining years.
Parliament soon granted him the further
protection to his patent which his memorial
prayed for, and this protection brought other
more substantial justice with it. Forced at
last to acknowledge and respect his rights,