Next year his wages were increased to fifteen shillings.  He then began to save money.  He did not put it in a bank, but used his savings for the purpose of making the tools with which he afterwards commenced business.  In the third year of his service, his wages were again increased, on account, doubtless, of the value of his services.  “I don’t know,” he has since said, “that any future period of my life abounded in such high enjoyment of existence as the three years I spent at Maudslay’s.  It was a glorious situation for one like myself,—­so earnest as I was in all that related to mechanism—­in the study of men as well as of machinery.  I wish many a young man would do as I then did.  I am sure they would find their reward in that feeling of constant improvement, of daily advancement, and true independence, which will ever have a charm for those who are earnest in their endeavours to make right progress in life and in the regard of all good men.”

After three years spent at Maudslay’s, Mr. Nasmyth returned to Edinburgh to construct a small stock of engineering tools suitable for starting him in business on his own account.  He hired a workshop and did various engineering jobs, in order to increase his little store of money and to execute his little stock of tools.  This occupied him for two years; and in 1834 he removed the whole of his tools and machinery to Manchester.  He began business there in a very humble way, but it increased so rapidly that he was induced to remove to a choice piece of land on the banks of the Bridgewater Canal at Patricroft, and there make a beginning—­at first in wooden sheds—­of the now famous Bridgewater Foundry.

“There,” says he, “I toiled right heartily until December 31st, 1856, when I retired to enjoy, in active leisure, the result of many an anxious and interesting day.  I had there, with the blessing of God, devoted the best years of my life to the pursuit of a business of which I was proud.  And I trust that, without undue vanity, I may be allowed to say that I have left my mark upon several useful inventions, which probably have had no small share in the mechanical works of the age.  There is scarcely a steamship or locomotive that is not indebted to my steam hammer; and without it, Armstrong and Whitworth guns and iron-plated men-of-war could scarcely have existed.”

But though Nasmyth retired from business at the age of forty-eight, he did not seek repose in idleness.  He continues to be as busy as the busiest; but in an altogether different direction.  Instead of being tied to the earth, he enjoys himself amongst the stars.  By means of telescopes of his own making, he has investigated the sun, and discovered its “willow leaves;” he has examined and photographed the moon, and in the monograph of it which he has published, he has made us fully acquainted with its geography.  He is also a thorough artist, and spends a considerable portion of his time in painting,—­though he is too modest to exhibit.  The last time we visited his beautiful home at Hammerfield, he was busy polishing glasses for one of his new telescopes,—­the motive power being a windmill erected on one of his outhouses.