opportunity arrived for turning these to account-when the silk-throwing machinery of the Congleton mill, for instance, had to be perfected and brought to the point of effectively performing its intended work-Brindley was found able to take it in hand and carry out the plan, when even its own designer had given it up in despair. But it must also be remembered that this extraordinary ability of Brindley was in a great measure the result of close observation, pains-taking study of details, and the most indefatigable industry.

The same qualities were displayed in his improvements of the steam-engine, and his arrangements to economise power in the pumping of water from drowned mines. It was often said of his works, as was said of Columbus's discovery, “How easy! how simple!" but this was after the fact. Before he had brought his fund of experience and clearness of vision to bear upon a difficulty, every one was equally ready to exclaim "How difficult! how absolutely impracticable !" This was the case with his "castle in the air," the Barton Viaduct-such a work as had never before been attempted in England, though now any common mason would undertake it. It was Brindley's merit always to be ready with his simple, practical expedient; and he rarely failed to effect his purpose, difficult although at first sight its accomplishment might seem to be.

Like men of a similar stamp, Brindley had great confidence in himself and in his powers and resources. Without this, it had been impossible for him to have accomplished so much as he did. It is said that the King of France, hearing of his wonderful genius, and the works he had performed for the Duke of Bridgewater at Worsley, expressed a desire to see him, and sent a message inviting him to view the Grand Canal of Languedoc. But Brindley's reply was characteristic: "I will have no journeys to foreign countries," said he, "unless to be employed in surpassing all that has been already done in them."

His observation was remarkably quick. In surveying a

district, he rapidly noted the character of the country, the direction of the hills and the valleys, and, after a few journeys on horseback, he clearly settled in his mind the best line to be selected for a canal, which almost invariably proved to be the right one. In like manner he would estimate with great rapidity the fall of a brook or river while walking along the banks, and thus determined the height of his cuttings and embankments, which he afterwards settled by a more systematic survey. estimates he was rarely, if ever, found mistaken.

In these

His brother-in-law, Mr. Henshall, has said of him, "when any extraordinary difficulty occurred to Mr. Brindley in the execution of his works, having little or no assistance from books or the labours of other men, his resources lay within himself. In order, therefore, to be quiet and uninterrupted whilst he was in search of the necessary expedients, he generally retired to his bed ;* and he has been known to be there one, two, or three days, till he had attained the object in view. He would then get up and execute his design, without any drawing or model. Indeed, it was never his custom to make either, unless he was obliged to do it to satisfy his employers. His memory was so remarkable that he has often declared that he could remember, and execute, all the parts of the most complex machine, provided he had time, in his survey of it, to settle in his mind the several parts and their relations to each other. His method of calculating the powers of any machine invented by him was peculiar to himself. He worked the question for some time in his head, and then put down the results in figures. After this, taking it up again at that stage, he worked it further in his mind for a certain time, and set down the results as before. In the same way he

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*The younger Pliny seems to have adopted almost a similar method: 'Clausæ fenestræ manent. Mirè enim silentio et tenebris animus alitur. Ab iis quæ

avocant abductus, et liber, et mihi relictus, non oculos animo sed animum oculis sequor, qui eadem quæ mens vident quoties non vident alia."-Epist. lib. ix., ep. 36.

still proceeded, making use of figures only at stated parts of the question. Yet the ultimate result was generally true, though the road he travelled in search of it was unknown to all but himself, and perhaps it would not have been in his power to have shown it to another."*

The statement about his taking to bed to study his more difficult problems is curiously confirmed by Brindley's own note-book, in which he occasionally enters the words "lay in bed," as if to mark the period, though he does not particularise the object of his thoughts on such occasions. It was a great misfortune for Brindley, as it must be to every man, to have his mental operations confined exclusively within the limits of his profession. Anthony Trollope well observes, that "industry is a good thing, and there is no bread so sweet as that which is eaten in the sweat of a man's brow; but the sweat that is ever running makes the bread bitter." Brindley thought and lived mechanics, and never rose above them. He found no pleasure in anything else; amusement of every kind was distasteful to him; and his first visit to the theatre, when in London, was also his last. Shut out from the humanising influence of books, and without any taste for the politer arts, his mind went on painfully grinding in the mill of mechanics. "He never

seemed in his element," said his friend Bentley, "if he was not either planning or executing some great work, or conversing with his friends upon subjects of importance." To the last he was full of projects and full of work; and then the wheels of life came to a sudden stop, when he could work no longer.

It is related of him that, when dying, some eager canal undertakers insisted on having an interview with him.

Biographia Britannica,' 2nd Ed. Edited by Dr. Kippis. The materials of the article are acknowledged to have been obtained principally from Mr. Henshall by Messrs. Wedgwood and Bentley,

who wrote and published the memoir in testimony of their admiration and respect for their deceased friend, the engineer of the Grand Trunk Canal.

They had encountered a serious difficulty in the course of constructing their canal, and they must have the advice of Mr. Brindley on the subject. They were introduced to the apartment where he lay scarce able to gasp, yet his mind was clear. They explained their difficulty—they could not make their canal hold water. "Then puddle it,” said the engineer. They explained that they had already done so. "Then puddle it again and again." This was all he could say, and it was enough.

It remains to be added that, in his private character, Brindley commanded general respect and admiration. His integrity was inflexible; his manner, though rough and homely, was kind; and his conduct unimpeachable.* He was altogether unassuming and unostentatious, and dressed and lived with great plainness. His was the furthest possible from a narrow or jealous temper, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to assist others with their inventions, and to train up a generation of engineers in his pupils, qualified to carry out the works he had himself designed, when he should be no longer able to conduct them. The principal undertakings in which he was engaged up to the time of his death were carried on by his brother-in-law, Mr. Henshall, formerly his clerk of the works on the Grand Trunk Canal, and by his able pupil, Mr. Robert Whitworth,

* It has, indeed, been stated in the strange publication of the last Earl of Bridgewater, to which we have already alluded, that when in the service of the Duke, Brindley was "drunken." But this is completely contradicted by the testimony of Brindley's own friends; by the evidence of Brindley's notebook, from repeated entries in which it appears that his "ating and drink" at dinner cost no more than 8d.; by the confidence generally reposed in him, and the

friendship entertained for him, by such men as Josiah Wedgwood; and by the fact of the vast amount of work that he subsequently contrived to get through. No man of "drunken habits could possibly have done this. We should not have referred to this topic but for the circumstance that the late Mr. Baines, of Leeds, has quoted the Earl's statement, without contradiction, in his excellent History of Lancashire.'

for both of whom he had a peculiar regard, and of whose integrity and abilities he had the highest opinion.

Brindley left behind him two daughters, one of whom, Susannah, married Mr. Bettington, of Bristol, merchant, afterwards the Honourable Mr. Bettington, of Brindley's Plains, Van Diemen's Land, where their descendants still live. His other daughter, Anne, died unmarried, on her passage home from Sydney, in 1838. His widow, still young, married again, and died at Longport in 1826. Brindley had the sagacity to invest a considerable portion of his savings in Grand Trunk shares, the great increase in the value of which, as well as of his colliery property at Golden Hill, enabled him to leave his family in affluent circumstances.

Before finally dismissing the subject of Brindley's canals, we may briefly allude to the influence which they exercised upon the enterprise as well as the speculation of the time. "When these fellows," says Sheridan in the Critic,' “have once got hold of a good thing, they do not know when to stop." This might be said of the speculative projectors of canals, as afterwards of railways. The commercial success which followed the opening of the Duke's Canal, and shortly after it the Grand Trunk, soon infected the whole country, and canal schemes were projected in great numbers for the accommodation even of the most remote and unlikely places.

In those districts where the demand for improved water communication grew out of an actual want-as, for instance, where it was necessary to open up a large coal-field for the supply of a population urgently in need of fuel-or where two large towns, such as Manchester and Liverpool, required to be provided with a more cheap and convenient means of trading intercourse than had formerly existedor where districts carrying on extensive and various manufactures, such as Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and