fitted, that he even complained to him of his style of work. “Jem,” said he, "if thou goes on i' this foolish way o' workin', there will be very little trade left to be done when thou comes oot o' thy time: thou knaws firmness o' wark's th' ruin o' trade." Brindley, however, gave no heed whatever to the unprincipled suggestion, and considered it the duty and the pride of the mechanic always to execute the best possible work.

Among the other jobs which Brindley's master was employed to execute about this time, was the machinery of a new paper-mill proposed to be erected on the river Dane. The arrangements were to be the same as those adopted in the Smedley paper-mill on the Irk, and at Throstle-Nest, on the Irwell, near Manchester; and Bennett went over to inspect the machinery at those places. But Brindley was afterwards of opinion that he must have inspected the taverns in Manchester much more closely than the papermills in the neighbourhood; for when he returned, the practical information he brought with him proved almost a blank. Nevertheless, Bennett could not let slip the opportunity of undertaking so lucrative a piece of employment in his special line, and, ill-informed though he was, he set his men to work upon the machinery of the proposed papermill.

It very soon appeared that Bennett was altogether unfitted for the performance of the contract which he had undertaken. The machinery, when made, would not fit; it would not work; and, what with drink and what with perplexity, Bennett soon got completely bewildered. Yet to give up the job altogether would be to admit his own incompetency as a mechanic, and must necessarily affect his future employment as a millwright. He and his men, therefore, continued distractedly to persevere in their operations, but without the slightest appearance of satisfactory progress.

About this time an old hand, who happened to be passing the place at which the men were at work, looked in upon

them and examined what they were about, as a mere matter of curiosity. When he had done so, he went on to the nearest public-house and uttered his sentiments on the subject very freely. He declared that the job was a farce, and that Abraham Bennett was only throwing his employer's money away. The statement of what the ". experienced hand " had said, was repeated until it came to the cars of young Brindley. Concerned for the honour of his shop as well as for the credit of his master-though he probably owed him no great obligation on the score either of treatment or instruction-Brindley formed the immediate resolution of attempting to master the difficulty so that the work might be brought to a satisfactory completion.

At the end of the week's work Brindley left the mill without saying a word of his intention to any one, and instead of returning to his master's house, where he lodged, he took the road for Manchester. Bennett was in a state of great alarm lest he should have run away; for Brindley, now in the fourth year of his apprenticeship, had reached the age of twenty-one, and the master feared that, taking advantage of his legal majority, he had left his service never to return. A messenger was despatched in the course of the evening to his mother's house; but he was not there. Sunday came and passed-still no word of young Brindley he must have run away!

On Monday morning Bennett went to the paper-mill to proceed with his fruitless work; and lo! the first person he saw was Brindley, with his coat off, working away with greater energy than ever. His disappearance was soon explained. He had been to Smedley Mill to inspect the machinery there with his own eyes, and clear up his master's difficulty. He had walked the twenty-five miles thither on the Saturday night, and on the following Sunday morning he had waited on Mr. Appleton, the proprietor of the mill, and requested permission to inspect the machinery. With an unusual degree of liberality Mr. Appleton gave the required consent, and Brindley spent the whole of that

Sunday in the most minute inspection of the entire arrangements of the mill. He could not make notes, but he stored up the particulars carefully in his head; and believing that he had now thoroughly mastered the difficulty, he set out upon his return journey, and walked the twenty-five miles back to Macclesfield again.

Having given this proof of his determination, as he had already given of his skill in mechanics, Bennett was only too glad to give up the whole conduct of the contract thenceforth to his apprentice; Brindley assuring him that he should now have no difficulty in completing it to his satisfaction. No time was lost in revising the whole design; many parts of the work already fixed were rejected by Brindley, and removed; others, after his own design, were substituted; several entirely new improvements were added; and in the course of a few weeks the work was brought to a conclusion, within the stipulated time, to the satisfaction of the proprietors of the mill.

There was now no longer any question as to the extraordinary mechanical skill of Bennett's apprentice. The old man felt that he had been in a measure saved by young Brindley, and thenceforth, during the remainder of his apprenticeship, he left him in principal charge of the shop. For several years after, Brindley maintained his old master and his family in respectability and comfort; and when Bennett died, Brindley carried on the concern until the work in hand had been completed and the accounts wound up; after which he removed from Macclesfield to begin business on his own account at the town of Leek, in Staffordshire.

CHAPTER VII.

BRINDLEY AS MASTER WHEELWRIGHT AND MILLWRIGHT. BRINDLEY had now been nine years at his trade, seven as apprentice and two as journeyman; and he began business as a wheelwright at Leek at the age of twenty-six. He had no capital except his skill, and no influence except that which his character as a steady workman gave him. Leek was not a manufacturing place at the time when Brindley began business there in 1742. It was but a small market town, the only mills in the neighbourhood being a few grist-mills driven by the streamlets flowing into the waters of the Dane, the Churnet, and the Trent. These mills usually contained no more than a single pair of stones, and they were comparatively rude and primitive in their arrangement and construction.

Brindley at first obtained but a moderate share of employment. His work was more strongly done, and his charges were consequently higher, than was customary in the district; and the agricultural classes were as yet too poor to enable them to pay the prices of the best work. He gradually, however, acquired a position, and became known for his skill in improving old machinery or inventing such new mechanical arrangements as might be required for any special purpose. He was very careful to execute the jobs which were entrusted to him within the stipulated time, and he began to be spoken of as a thoroughly reliable workman. Thus his business gradually extended to other places at a distance from Leek, and more especially into the Staffordshire Pottery districts, about to rise into importance under the fostering energy of Josiah Wedgwood.

At first Brindley kept neither apprentices nor journeymen, but felled his own timber and cut it up himself, with such

assistance as he could procure on the spot. As his business increased he took in an apprentice, and then a journeyman, to carry on the work in the shop while he was absent; and he was often called to a considerable distance from home, more particularly for the purpose of being consulted about any new machinery that was proposed to be put up. Nor did he confine himself to mill-work. He was ready to undertake all sorts of machinery connected with the pumping of water, the draining of mines, the smelting of iron. and copper, and the various mechanical arrangements connected with the manufactures rising into importance in the adjoining counties of Cheshire and Lancashire. Whenever he was called upon in this way, he endeavoured to introduce improvements; and to such an extent did he carry this tendency, that he became generally known in the neighbourhood by the name of "The Schemer."

A number of Brindley's memoranda books* are still in existence, which show the varied nature of his employment during this early part of his career. It appears from the entries made in them, that he was not only employed in repairing and fitting up silk-throwing mills at Macclesfield, all of which were then driven by water, but also in repairing corn-mills at Congleton, Newcastle-under-Lyne, and various other places, besides those in the immediate neighbourhood of Leek, where he lived. We believe the pocket memoranda books, to which we refer, were the only records which Brindley kept of his early business transactions; the rest he carried in his memory, which by practice became remarkably retentive. Whilst working as an apprentice at Macclesfield, he had taught himself the art of writing; but he never mastered it thoroughly, and to the end of his life he wrote with difficulty, and almost illegibly. His spelling was also very bad; and what with the bad

In the possession of Joseph Mayer, Esq., of Liverpool, who has kindly permitted the author to inspect the whole of his valuable

manuscripts relating to Brindley, so curiously illustrative of his start in life as a working and consulting Engineer.