66 TO EXTENT AND VARIETY OF KNOWLEDGE WAS JOINED A KINDNESS AND LIBERALITY WHICH MADE THAT KNOWLEDGE THE PROPERTY OF THE PUBLIC, AND AVAILABLE ON ALL OCCASIONS TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE ARTS AND MANU. FACTURES OF HIS COUNTRY."-Kirkman Finlay. WHILE Watt had been silently employed in imbodying his ideas, the attention of the inhabitants of the west of Scotland was fixed on the operations of an English physician, a man of original and splendid enterprise, who had become celebrated as a projector of rare and excellent fortune in some apparently even unpropitious speculations. Doctor John Roebuck was a native of Sheffield, in which town his father was a manufacturer in easy circumstances. Having the choice of a profession left to himself, he began the study of medicine at Edinburgh, and became an expert chemical manipulator. At Leyden, where he completed his studies, he took his degree, and on his return to England, he practised as a physician at Birmingham. The avocations of an extensive practice were not, however, so exclusive as to engage his whole attention, and he resumed with ardour his chemical inquiries. In conjunction with a 244 DOCTOR ROEBUCK. friend, he soon afterwards erected an extensive laboratory, and there he applied on the great scale, for the purposes of the manufacturer, some of the economical processes to which his experiments had directed him. The result of his researches on sulphuric acid, then of a high price, led to an entire revolution in the value and preparation of this substance. From its manufacture, which was long conducted with impenetrable secresy, at Prestonpans, the golden harvest which he reaped was so ample, that he abandoned the practice of the healing art as a profession*. JOHN ROEBUCK, M.D. F.R.S., was born in 1718. After leaving the grammar-school of Sheffield, he was placed under the tuition of Dr. Doddridge at Northampton, where he laid the foundation of that classical knowledge for which he was afterwards much distinguished. With his fellow students, Jeremiah Dyson, afterwards well known in the political world, and Akenside, the poet, he contracted friendships which continued during their lives. At Edinburgh he displayed great logical and physical acuteness, and was noted for ingenuity and resource in debate. The saga cious Porterfield observed and encouraged his rising genius, and here he formed friendships with Hume and Robertson, the historians. He left Edinburgh in 1744, and studied at Leyden the usual time for his degree; on his return he settled at Birmingham. His education, talents, and interesting manners, were well calculated to promote his success as a physician, and he met there with great encouragement, and was soon distinguished in that town and the country adjacent, for his skill, integrity, and charitable compassion in the discharge of the duties of his profession. In his manufacturing laboratory he practised certain methods of refining gold and silver, and particularly an ingenious method of collecting the smaller particles of these precious metals, which had been formerly lost in the practical operations of many of the manufacturers. In 1747 he married Miss Ann Roe, of Sheffield, a woman of a great and generous spirit, whose temper and disposition equally fitted her for enjoying the prosperous circumstances of their early life, and for bear ing her share in those anxieties and disappointments which shaded the latter periods of their lives. A Dr. Ward was the first in England who established a profitable manufacture of The banks of the little river which formed the most northern boundary of the Roman empire in oil of vitriol, but from the great expense of glass vessels, and the frequent accidents to which they were liable in the process, the acid was high in price. Roebuck substituted leaden vessels of great size, for the glass ones, and by this and other improvements reduced its price from sixteen pence to four pence a pound. This was one of the most lucrative establishments of the time; but, instead of taking ont a patent, he chose the better plan of conducting the process in great secresy, which was persevered in successfully for a great many years. Carron was his greatest work; and he was the first, who by means of pit-coal refined crude or pig-iron to make bar iron of it, instead of doing it by char coal, as formerly practised. The best and certain proof of his judgment and science, is the prosperous state of these works, and their having served as a model to others of great magnitude in different parts of Scotland, which may be said to have sprung from this as a parent. It is painful to retrace the unhappy consequences of his ruinous speculation in the coal and salt works at Kinneil. The result was, that after many years of labour and industry, he sunk not only his own, but the considerable fortune brought to him by his wife, the profits and property in all his speculations, and what distressed him most, great sums borrowed from his relations and friends which he never was able to repay. During the last twenty years of his life, he was subjected to a constant succession of hopes and disappointments, and to a course of labour and drudgery. As the price of so many sacrifices he was only enabled to draw from his colliery, (and that by the indulgence of his creditors,) a moderate annual maintenance during his life. At his death, his widow and family were left without any provision whatever for their immediate or future support, and without the smallest advantage from the extraordinary exertions and meritorious industry of her husband. These works, of no advantage to himself, and which ruined his family, were attended with the most beneficial effects upon the trade, population, and industry of Scotland. At his death, not less than four thousand persons were directly employed in establishments which he founded, and their wages alone amounted to about eighty thousand pounds per annum. Had each of those persons allowed their common benefactor, in his old age, eighteen pence per annum only, he would have received more than he did from the compassion of his creditors. But it was not solely by his individual establish |