Health. The whole of the details are beautifully finished, and the
basement of the design will be admired by every true artist. It is
regarded as a great ornament, and is thoroughly in keeping with the
beauty of the surrounding scenery.

Shortly after the death of Lord Nelson it was proposed to erect a
monument to his memory on the Calton Hill. My father supplied a
design, which was laid before the Monument Committee. It was so much
approved that the required sum was rapidly subscribed. But as the
estimated cost of this erection was found slightly to exceed the amount
subscribed, a nominally cheaper design was privately adopted. It was
literally a job. The vulgar, churn-like monument was thus thrust on
the public and actually erected; and there it stands to this day, a
piteous sight to beholders. It was eventually found greatly to exceed
in cost the amount of the estimate for my father's design. I give a
sketch of my father's memorial; and I am led to do this because it is
erroneously alleged that he was the architect of the present inverted
spy glass, called "Nelson's Monument"

[Image] Nelson's Monument as it should have been.

Then, with respect to my father's powers as a mechanic. This was an
inherited faculty, and I leave my readers to infer from the following
pages whether I have not had my fair share of this inheritance. Besides
his painting room, my father had a workroom fitted up with all sorts of
mechanical tools. It was one of his greatest pleasures to occupy
himself there as a relief from sitting at the easel, or while within
doors from the inclemency of the weather. The walls and shelves of his
workroom were crowded with a multitude of artistic and ingenious
mechanical objects, nearly all of which were the production of his own