Crispins, over and above their Christian fellows who stick solitary
to the last, and who, it must be owned, produce an article more of the
Revolutionary type and more solid and durable. As a cord-wainer Steam
is a failure; but he works cheaply, and will continue to hammer on,
and disseminate his commodity of brown paper throughout the temperate
zone. Three-fourths of the population of the globe still runs unshod,
however, and it is obvious that this crying want cannot be met by
the old system. Steam will perforce keep pegging away till Cathay,
Xipangu, India and all the isles awaken to the absurdity of walking on
cotton or undressed human skin. Could one of our 299 fire-fed cobblers
have been set to work at Valley Forge, backed by one of the 1057
makers of woolen that are similarly nourished!

But we do Mr. Watt's lusty bantling injustice in assigning him
exclusively the tastes of a cit. He is not insensible to pastoral
charms, and often selects a home among the hemlocks and under the
broad-armed oaks, by bosky glen or open mead, wherever the brooklet
brawls or dreams, for he sticks to the waterside like a beaver. Here
he sits down, like an artist as he is, until he has got all the choice
bits of the grove. The large and bustling family of the sawyers, both
top and bottom, he has utterly banished from their ancient haunts.
'There would be needed a million and a half of them to take the places
of 11,199 steam-engines, of 314,774 horse-power, that are devastating
our forests. An equal number is replaced by the 16,559 water-wheels,
of 326,728 horse-power, engaged in the same field of havoc. Armed
with the handsaw, all the Revolutionary patriots and Tories together,
withdrawing their attention entirely from military affairs, as well as
from all other mundane concerns, would not have turned out one-sixth
of the quantity of lumber demanded by their descendants of a period
that boasts itself the age of iron, and has as little as possible