On the morning of Monday, the 30th of May 1829, I commenced my regular attendance at Mr. Maudsley's workshop. My first job was to assist him in making some modifications in the details of a machine which he had contrived some years before for generating original screws. I use the word “generating” as being most appropriate to express the objects and results of one of Mr. Maudsley's most original inventions.

It consisted in the employment of a knife-edged hardened steel instrument, so arranged as to be set at any required angle, and its edge caused to penetrate the surface of a cylindrical bar of soft steel or brass. This bar being revolved under the incisive action of the angularly placed knife-edged instrument, it thus received a continuous spiral groove cut into its surface. It was thus in the condition of a rudimentary screw; the pitch, or interval between the threads, being determined by the greater or less angle of obliquity at which the knife-edged instrument was set with respect to the axis of the cylindrical bars revolving under its incisive action.

The spiral groove, thus generated, was deepened to the required extent by a suitable and pointed hard steel tool firmly held in the jaws of an adjustable slide made for the purpose, as part and parcel of the bed of the machine.

In the autumn of 1830 Mr. Maudsley went to Berlin for the purpose of superintending the erection of machinery at the Royal Mint there. He intended to be absent from London for about a month; and he kindly permitted me to take a holiday during that period.

I had been greatly interested by the descriptions in the newspapers of the locomotive competition at Rainhill, near Liverpool. I was, therefore, exceedingly anxious to see Stephenson's “Rocket,” the engine that had won the prize. Taking with me letters of introduction from Mr. Maudsley to persons of influence at Liverpool, I left London for the north on the afternoon of Saturday the 9th of September 1830. I took my place on the outside of the Liverpool coach, which set out from “The Swan with Two Necks,” in Lad Lane, city, one of the most celebrated coach-offices in those days.

The first part of the journey to Liverpool was very dismal. The night was wet. The rain came pouring down, and no sort of wrappings could keep it out. The outside passengers became thoroughly soaked. On we went, however, as fast as four horses could carry us. Next morning we reached Coventry, when the clouds cleared away, and the sun at last burst forth.

The chief object of my ambition was now to be taken on at Henry Maudsley's works in London. I had heard so much of his engineering work, of his assortment of machine-making tools, and of the admirable organisation of his manufactory, that I longed to obtain employment there. I was willing to labour, in however humble a capacity, in that far-famed workshop.

I was aware that my father had not the means of paying the large premium required for placing me as an apprentice at Maudsley's firm. I was also informed that Maudsley had ceased to take pupils. After experience, he found that the premium apprentices caused him much annoyance and irritation. They came in “gloves;” their attendance was irregular; they spread a bad example amongst the regular apprentices and workmen; and on the whole they were found to be very disturbing elements in the work of the factory.

It therefore occurred to me that, by showing some specimens of my work and drawings, I might be able to satisfy Mr. Maudsley that I was not an amateur, but a regular working engineer. With this object I set to work, and made with special care, a most complete working model of a highpressure engine. The cylinder was 2 inches diameter, and the stroke 6 inches.

Astronomy, instead of merely being an amusement, became my chief study. It occupied many of my leisure hours. Desirous of having the advantage of a Reflecting Telescope of large aperture, I constructed one of twenty inches diameter. In order to avoid the personal risk and inconvenience of having to mount to the eye-piece by a ladder, I furnished the telescope tube with trunnions, like a cannon, with one of the trunnions hollow so as to admit of the eye-piece. Opposite to it a plain diagonal mirror was placed, to transmit the image to the eye. The whole was mounted on a turn-table, having a seat opposite to the eye-piece, as will be seen in the engraving on the other side.

The observer, when seated, could direct the telescope to any part of the heavens without moving from his seat. Although this arrangement occasioned some loss of light, that objection was more than compensated by the great convenience which it afforded for the prosecution of the special class of observations in which I was engaged; namely, that of the Sun, Moon, and Planets.

I wrote to my old friend Sir David Brewster, then living at St. Andrews, in 1849, about this improvement, and he duly congratulated me upon my devotion to astronomical science.

Let me turn for a time from the Foundry, the whirr of the self-acting tools, and the sound of the steam hammers, to my quieter pursuits at home. There I had much tranquil enjoyment in the company of my dear wife. I had many hobbies. Drawing was as familiar to me as language. Indeed, it was often my method of speaking. It has always been the way in which I have illustrated my thoughts. In the course of my journeys at home and abroad I made many drawings of places and objects, which were always full of interest, to me at least; and they never ceased to bring up a store of happy thoughts.

Now and then I drew upon my fancy, and with pen and ink I conjured up “The Castle of Udolpho,” “A Bit of Old England,” “The Fairies are Out,” and “Everybody for Ever.” The last is crowded with thousands of figures and heads, so that it is almost impossible to condense the drawing into a small compass. To these I added “The Alchemist,” “Old Mortality,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and a bit of English scenery, which I called “Gathering Sticks.” I need not say with how much pleasure I executed these drawings in my evening hours.

In 1840 I furnished Sir Edward Parry with a drawing of my steam hammer, in the hope that I might induce him to recommend its adoption in the Royal Dockyards. Sir Edward was at that timé the head director of the steam marine of England. That was after the celebrity he had acquired through his Arctic voyages. I was of opinion that the hammer might prove exceedingly useful in forging anchors and large iron work in those great establishments. Sir Edward appeared to be much struck with the simplicity and probable efficiency of the invention. But the Admiralty Board were very averse to introducing new methods of manufacturing into the dockyards. Accordingly, my interview with Sir Edward Parry, notwithstanding his good opinion, proved fruitless.

Time passed by. I had furnished steam hammers to the principal foundries in England. I had sent them abroad, even to Russia. At length it became known to the Lords of the Admiralty that a new power in forging had been introduced. This was in 1843, three years after I had submitted my design to Sir Edward Parry. The result was that my Lords appointed a deputation of intelligent officers to visit my foundry at Patricroft to see the new invention.

I had been for some time contemplating the possibility of retiring altogether from business. I had got enough of the world's goods, and was willing to make way for younger men. But I found it difficult to break loose from old associations. Like the retired tallow-chandler, I might wish to go back “on melting days.” I had some correspondence with my old friend David Roberts, Royal Academician, on the subject. He wrote to me on the 2d June 1853, and said:—

“I rejoice to learn, from the healthy tone that breathes throughout your epistle, that you are as happy as every one who knows you wishes you to be, and as prosperous as you deserve. Knowing, also, as I do, your feeling for art and all that tends to raise and dignify man, I most sincerely congratulate you on the prospect of your being able to retire, in the full vigour of manhood, to follow out that sublime pursuit, in comparison with which the painter's art is but a faint glimmering. ‘The Landscape of other worlds’ you alone have sketched for us, and enlightened us on that with which the ancient world but gazed upon and worshipped in the symbol of Astarte, Isis, and Diana. We are matter-of-fact now, and have outlived childhood. What say you of a photograph of those wonderful drawings? It may come to that.”

Our history begins long before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us. The sentiment of ancestry seems to be inherent in human nature, especially in the more civilised races. At all events, we cannot help having a due regard for our forefathers. Our curiosity is stimulated by their immediate or indirect influence upon ourselves. It may be a generous enthusiasm, or, as some might say, a harmless vanity, to take pride in the honour of their name. The gifts of nature, however, are more valuable than those of fortune; and no line of ancestry, however honourable, can absolve us from the duty of diligent application and perseverance, or from the practice of the virtues of self-control and self-help.

Sir Bernard Burke, in his Peerage and Baronetage, gives a faithful account of the ancestors from whom I am lineally descended. “The family of Naesmyth,” he says, “is one of remote antiquity in Tweeddale, and has possessed lands there since the 13th century.” They fought in the wars of Bruce and Baliol, which ended in the independence of Scotland.

The following is the family legend of the origin of the name of Naesmyth:—

Before I went to school it was my good fortune to be placed under the special care of my eldest sister, Jane. She was twenty years older than myself, and had acquired much practical experience in the management of the younger members of the family. I could not have had a more careful teacher. She initiated me into the depths of A B C, and by learning me to read she gave me the key to the greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers who have ever lived.

But all this was accomplished at first in a humdrum and tentative way. About seventy years ago children's books were very uninteresting. In the little stories manufactured for children, the good boy ended in a coach-and-four, and the bad boy in a ride to Tyburn. The good boys must have been a set of little snobs and prigs, and I could scarcely imagine that they could ever have lived as they were represented in these goody books. If so, they must have been the most tiresome and uninteresting vermin that can possibly be imagined.

After my sister had done what she could for me, I was sent to school to learn English. I was placed under the tuition of a leading teacher called Knight, whose schoolroom was in the upper storey of a house in George Street.

The rapid extension of railways and steam navigation, both at home and abroad, occasioned a largely increased demand for machinery of all kinds. Our order-book was always full; and every mechanical workshop felt the impulse of expanding trade. There was an increased demand for skilled mechanical labour—a demand that was far in excess of the supply. Employers began to outbid each other, and wages rapidly rose. At the same time the disposition to steady exertion on the part of the workmen began to decline.

This state of affairs had its usual effect. It increased the demand for self-acting tools, by which the employers might increase the productiveness of their factories without having resort to the costly and untrustworthy method of meeting the demand by increasing the number of their workmen. Machine tools were found to be of much greater advantage. They displaced hand-dexterity, and muscular force. They were unfailing in their action. They could not possibly go wrong in planing and turning, because they were regulated by perfect modelling and arrangements of parts. They were always ready for work, and never required a Saint Monday.

As the Bridgewater Foundry had been so fortunate as to earn for itself a considerable reputation for mechanical contrivances, the workshops were always busy.

When James Watt retired from business towards the close of his useful and admirable life, he spoke to his friends of occupying himself with “ingenious trifles,” and of turning “some of his idle thoughts” upon the invention of an arithmetical machine and a machine for copying sculpture. These and other useful works occupied his attention for many years.

It was the same with myself. I had good health (which Watt had not) and abundant energy. When I retired from business I was only forty-eight years old, which may be considered the prime of life. But I had plenty of hobbies, perhaps the chief of which was Astronomy. No sooner had I settled at Hammerfield than I had my telescopes brought out and mounted. The fine clear skies with which we were favoured, furnished me with abundant opportunities for the use of my instruments. I began again my investigations on the Sun and the Moon, and made some original discoveries, of which more anon.

Early in the year 1858 I received a pressing invitation from the Council of the Edinburgh Philosophical Society to give a lecture before their members on the Structure of the Lunar Surface. As the subject was a favourite one with me, and as I had continued my investigations and increased my store of drawings since I had last appeared before an Edinburgh audience, I cheerfully complied with their request.

Although Alexander Nasmyth had to a considerable extent lost his aristocratic connection as a portrait painter, yet many kind and generous friends gathered around him. During his sojourn in Italy, in 1783, he had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Sir James Hall of Dunglass, Haddingtonshire. The acquaintance afterwards ripened into a deeply-rooted friendship.

During the winter season Sir James resided with his family in his town house in George Street. He was passionately attached to the pursuit of art and science. He practised the art of painting in my father's room, and was greatly helped by him in the requisite manipulative skill. Sir James was at that time engaged in writing his wellknown essay “On the Origin of Gothic Architecture,” and in this my father was of important help to him. He executed the greater number of the illustrations to this beautiful work. The book when published had a considerable influence in restoring the taste of architects to a style which they had heretofore either neglected or degraded.

Besides his enthusiasm in art and architecture, Sir James devoted a great deal of time to the study of geology. The science was then in its infancy. Being an acute observer, Hall's attention was first attracted to the subject by the singular geological features of the sea-coast near his mansion at Dunglass.

I was born on the morning of the 19th of August 1808, at my father's house, No. 47 York Place, Edinburgh. I was named James Hall after my father's dear friend, Sir James Hall of Dunglass. My mother afterwards told me that I must have been “a very noticin' bairn,” as she observed me, when I was only a few days old, following with my little eyes any one who happened to be in the room, as if I had been thinking to my little self, “Who are you?”

After a suitable time I was put under the care of a nursemaid. I remember her well—Mary Peterkin—a truly Scandinavian name. She came from Haddingtonshire, where most of the people are of Scandinavian origin. Her hair was of a bright yellow tint. She was a cheerful young woman, and sang to me like a nightingale. She could not only sing old Scotch songs, but had a wonderful memory for fairy tales. When under the influence of a merry laugh, you could scarcely see her eyes; their twinkle was hidden by her eyelids and lashes. She was a willing worker, and was always ready to lend a helping hand at everything about the house. She took great pride in me, calling me her “laddie.”

When I was toddling about the house, another sister was born, the last of the family.

My father, Alexander Nasmyth, was the second son of Michael Nasmyth. He was born in his father's house in the Grassmarket on the 9th of September 1758. The Grassmarket was then a lively place. On certain days of the week it was busy with sheep and cattle fairs. It was the centre of Edinburgh traffic. Most of the inns were situated there, or in the street leading up to the Greyfriars' Church gate.

The view from my grandfather's house was very grand. Standing up, right opposite, was the steep Castle rock, with its crown buildings and circular battery towering high overhead. They seemed almost to hang over the verge of the rock. The houses on the opposite side of the Grassmarket were crowded under the esplanade of the Castle Hill.

There was an inn opposite the house where my father was born, from which the first coach started from Edinburgh to Newcastle. The public notice stated that “The Coach would set out from the Grass Market ilka Tuesday at Twa o'clock in the day, God wullin’, but whether or no on Wednesday.” The “whether or no” was meant, I presume, as a precaution to passengers, in case all the places on the coach might not be taken on Wednesday.

The Grassmarket was also the place for public executions. The gibbet stone was at the east end of the Market.