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DID YOU KNOW THE CELEBRATED WATT OF BIRMINGHAM, CAPTAIN CLUTTERBUCK?
The Monastery

Dear Captain, do not admire, that, notwithstanding the distance and ceremony of your address, I return an answer in the terms of familiarity. The truth is, your origin and native country are better known to me than even to yourself. You derive your respectable parentage, if I am not greatly mistaken, from a land which has afforded much pleasure, as well as profit, to those who have traded to it successfully, - I mean that part of the terra incognita which is called the province of Utopia. Its productions, though censured by many (and some who use tea and tobacco without scruple) as idle and unsubstantial luxuries, have nevertheless, like many other luxuries, a general acceptation, and are secretly enjoyed even by those who express the greatest scorn and dislike of them in public. The private book-cases of some grave-seeming men would not brook decent eyes - and many, I say not of the wise and learned, but of those most anxious to seem such, when the spring-lock of their library is drawn, their velvet cap pulled over their ears, their feet insinuated into their turkey slippers, are to be found, were their retreats suddenly intruded upon, busily engaged with the last new novel.

I have said, the truly wise and learned disdain these shifts, and will open the said novel as avowedly as they would the lid of their snuff-box. I will only quote one instance, though I know a hundred. Did you know the celebrated Watt of Birmingham, Captain Clutterbuck? It was only once my fortune to meet him, whether in body or in spirit it matters not. There were assembled about half a score of our Northern Lights. Amidst this company stood Mr. Watt, the man whose genius discovered the means of multiplying our national resources to a degree perhaps even beyond his own stupendous powers of calculation and combination; bringing the treasures of the abyss to the summit of the earth - giving the feeble arm of man the momentum of an Afrite - commanding manufactures to arise, as the rod of the prophet produced water in the desert - affording the means of dispensing with that time and tide which wait for no man, and of sailing without that wind which defied the commands and threats of Xerxes himself.
This potent commander of the elements - this abridger of time and space - this magician, whose cloudy machinery has produced a change on the world, the effects of which, extraordinary as they are, are perhaps only now beginning to be felt - was not only the most profound man of science, the most successful combiner of powers and calculator of numbers as adapted to practical purposes, - was not only one of the most generally well-informed, - but one of the best and kindest of human beings.

There he stood, surrounded by the little band I have mentioned of Northern literati. In his eighty-fifth year, the alert, kind, benevolent old man, had his attention alive to every one's question, his information at every one's command.
His talents and fancy overflowed on every subject you would have said the old man had studied political economy and belles-lettres all his life, - of science it is unnecessary to speak, it was his own distinguished walk. In fact, we discovered that no novel of the least celebrity escaped his perusal, and that the gifted man of science was as much addicted to the productions of your native country, (the land of Utopia aforesaid,) in other words, as shameless and obstinate a peruser of novels, as if he had been a very milliner's apprentice of eighteen. I know little apology for troubling you with these things, excepting the desire to commemorate a delightful evening, and a wish to encourage you to shake off that modest diffidence which makes you afraid of being supposed connected with the fairy-land of delusive fiction.

Walter Scott, The Monastery,
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6406

• Abridger: colui che riduce/abbrevia, riduttore, compendiatore
• Belles-lettres: Letteratura
• Book-cases: librerie, scaffali, scanzie
• Commander: dominatore
• Delusive: ingannevole
• Gifted man of science: uomo favorito dalle scienze
• Luxuries: lusso/i
• Manufactures: manifatture
• Milliner: modista
• Momentum: possanza
• National resources: pubblica ricchezza
• Numbers: quantità
• Parentage: famiglia (d'origine)
• Perusal: attenta lettura, esame accurato
• Political Economy: Economia Politica
• Powers: potenze motrici
• Profit: profitto, beneficio
• Rod: verga
• Scorn: disprezzo
• Snuff-box: scatola del tabacco
• Spring-lock: serratura a scatto
• Turkey slippers: pantofole verdi
• Velvet cap: berrettone di velluto