his house and introduced him to many of his friends. Again Fulton
succeeded, and in 1791 two of his portraits were exhibited at the
Royal Academy, and the Royal Society of British Artists hung four
paintings by him.

Then came the commission which changed the course of Fulton's
life. His work had attracted the notice of Viscount Courtenay,
later Earl of Devon, and he was invited to Devonshire to paint
that nobleman's portrait. Here he met Francis, third Duke of
Bridgewater, the father of the English canal system, and his
hardly less famous engineer, James Brindley, and also Earl
Stanhope, a restless, inquiring spirit. Fulton the mechanic
presently began to dominate Fulton the artist. He studied canals,
invented a means of sawing marble in the quarries, improved the
wheel for spinning flax, invented a machine for making rope, and
a method of raising canal boats by inclined planes instead of
locks. What money he made from these inventions we do not know,
but somewhat later (1796) he speaks hopefully of an improvement
in tanning. This same year he published a pamphlet entitled "A
Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation", copies of which
were sent to Napoleon and President Washington.

Fulton went to France in 1797. To earn money he painted several
portraits and a panorama of the Burning of Moscow. This panorama,
covering the walls of a circular hall built especially for it,
became very popular, and Fulton painted another. In Paris he
formed a warm friendship with that singular American, Joel
Barlow, soldier, poet, speculator, and diplomatist, and his wife,
and for seven years lived in their house.