however, due to his noble employer to give him the most satisfying evidence in his power of the practicability of his design, he requested that another engineer might be called in to give his opinion before its execution should be determined on. This person Brindley car. ried to the spot where he proposed to rear his aqueduct, and endeavored to explain to him how he meant to carry on the work. But the man only shook his head, and remarked, that "he had often heard of castles in the air, but never before was shown where any of them were to be erected.". The duke, nevertheless, retained his confidence in his own engineer, and it was resolved that the work should proceed. The erection of the aqueduct, accordingly, was begun in September, 1760, and on the 17th of July following the first boat passed over it, the whole structure forming a bridge of above two hundred yards in length, supported upon three arches, of which the centre one rose nearly forty feet above the surface of the river; on which might be frequently beheld a vessel passing along, while another, with all its masts and sails standing, was holding its undisturbed way directly under its keel.

In 1762 an act of parliament was, after much opposition, obtained by the duke, for carrying a branch of his canal to communicate with Liverpool, and so uniting that town, by this method of communication, to Manchester. This portion of the canal, which is more than twenty-nine miles in length, is, like the former, without locks, and is carried by an aqueduct over the Mersey, the arch of which, however, is less lofty than that of the one over the Irwell, as the river is not navigable at the place where it crosses. It passes also over several valleys of considerable width and depth. Before this, the usual price of the carriage of goods between Liverpool and Manchester had been twelve shillings per ton by by water, and forty shillings by land; they were now conveyed by the canal, at a charge of six shillings per ton, and with all the regularity of land carriage.

In contemplating this great work, we ought not to overlook the admirable manner in which the enterprising nobleman, at whose expense it was undertaken, performed his part in carrying it on. It was his determination, as we have already stated, from the first, to spare no expense on its completion. Accordingly, he devoted to it during the time of its progress nearly the whole of his revenues, denying himself, all the while, even the ordinary accommodations of his rank, and living on an income of four hundred a year. He had even great commercial difficulties to contend with in the prosecution of his schemes, being at one time unable to raise 500%. on his bond on the Royal Exchange; and it was a chief business of his agent, Mr. Gilbert, to ride up and down the country to raise

money on his grace's promissory notes. It is true that he was afterwards amply repaid for this outlay and temporary sacrifice; but the compensation that eventually accrued to him he never might have lived to enjoy; and at all events he acted as none but extraordinary men do, in thus voluntarily relinquishing the present for the future, and preferring to any dissipation of his wealth on passing and merely personal objects, the creation of this magnificent monument of lasting public usefulness. Nor was it only in the liberality of his expenditure that the duke approved himself a patron worthy of Brindley. He supported his engineer throughout the undertaking with unflinching spirit, in the face of no little outcry and ridicule, to which the imagined extravagance or impracticability of many of his plans exposed him—and that even from those who were generally accounted the most scientific judges of such matters. The success with which these plans were carried into execution, is probably, in no slight degree, to be attributed to the perfect confidence with which their author was thus enabled to proceed.

While the Bridgewater canal was yet in progress, Mr. Brindley was engaged by Lord Gower, and the other principal landed pro. prietors of Staffordshire, to survey a line for another canal, which it was proposed should pass through that county, and, by uniting the Trent and the Mersey, open for it a communication, by water, with both the east and west coast. Having reported favorably of the practicability of this design, and an act of parliament having been obtained in 1765 for carrying it into effect, he was appointed to conduct the work. The scheme was one which had been often thought of; but the supposed impossibility of carrying the canal across the tract of elevated country which stretches along the cen. tral region of England had hitherto prevented any attempt to execute it. This was, however, precisely such an obstacle as Brindley delighted to cope with; and he at once overcame it, by carrying a tunnel through Harecastle Hill, of two thousand eight hundred and eighty yards in length, at a depth, in some places, of more than two hundred feet below the surface of the earth. This was only one of five tunnels excavated in different parts of the canal, which extends to the length of ninety-three miles, having seventy-six locks, and passing in its course over many aqueducts. Brindley, how. ever, did not live to execute the whole of this great work, which was finished by his brother-in-law, Mr. Henshall, in 1777, about eleven years after its commencement.

During the time that these operations, so new in England, were in progress, the curious crowded to witness them from all quarters, and the grandeur of many of Brindley's plans seems to have made a deep impression upon even his unscientific visiters.

A letter which appeared in the newspapers, while he was engaged with the Trent and Mersey Canal, gives us a lively picture of the astonishment with which the multitude viewed what he was about. The writer, it will be observed, alludes particularly to the Harecastle tunnel, the chief difficulty in excavating which arose from the nature of the soil it had to be cut through. "Gentlemen come to view our eighth wonder of the world, the subterranean navigation which is cutting by the great Mr. Brindley, who handles rocks as easily as you would plum-pies, and makes the four elements subservient to his will. He is as plain a looking man as one of the boors of the Peak, or one of his own carters; but when he speaks all ears listen, and every mind is filled with wonder at the things he pronounces to be practicable. He has cut a mile through bogs which he binds up, embanking them with stones, which he gets out of other parts of the navigation, besides about a quarter of a mile into the hill Yelden, on the side of which he has a pump, which is worked by water, and a stove, the fire of which sucks through a pipe the damps that would annoy the men who are cutting towards the centre of the hill. The clay he cuts out serves for brick to arch the subterraneous part, which we heartily wish to see finished to Wilden Ferry, when we shall be able to send coals and pots to London, and to different parts of the globe."

It would occupy too much of our space to detail, however rapidly, the history of the other undertakings of this description to which the remainder of Mr. Brindley's life was devoted. The success with which the Duke of Bridgewater's enterprising plans for the improvement of his property were rewarded, speedily prompted numerous other speculations of a similar description; and many canals were formed in different parts of the kingdom, in the execution or planning of almost all of which Brindley's services were employed. He himself had become quite an enthusiast in his new profession, as a little anecdote that has been often told of him may serve to show. Having been called on one occasion to give his evidence touching some professional point before a committee of the house of commons, he expressed himself, in the course of his examination, with so much contempt of rivers as means of internal navigation, that an honorable member was tempted to ask him for what purpose he conceived rivers to have been created? when Brindley, after hesitating a moment, replied, "To feed canals." His success as a builder of aqueducts would appear to have inspired him with almost as fervid a zeal in favor of bridges as of canals, if it be true, as has been asserted, that one of his favorite schemes contemplated the joining of Great Britain to Ireland by a bridge of boats extending from Port Patrick to Donag

hadee. This report, however, is alleged to be without foundation by the late Earl of Bridgewater, in a curious work which he published some years ago at Paris, relative to his predecessor's celebrated canal.

Brindley's multiplied labors, and intense application, rapidly wasted his strength, and shortened his life. He died at Turnhurst, in Staffordshire, on the 27th of September, 1772, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, having suffered for some years under a hectic fever, which he had never been able to get rid of. In his case, as in that of other active spirits, the soul seems to have

"O'er-inform'd its tenement of clay;"

although the actual bodily fatigue to which his many engagements subjected him, must doubtless have contributed to wear him out.

No man ever lived more for his pursuit, or less for himself, than Brindley. He had no sources of enjoyment, or even of thought, except in his profession. It is related, that having once, when in London, been prevailed upon to go to the theatre, the unusual excitement so confused and agitated him, as actually to unfit him for business for several days, on which account he never could be induced to repeat his visit. His total want of education, and ignorance of literature, left his genius without any other field in which to exercise itself and spend its strength than that which the pursuit of his profession afforded it: its power, even here, would not probably have been impaired, if it could have better sought relaxation in variety; on the contrary, its spring would most likely have been all the stronger for being occasionally unbent. We have already mentioned that he was all but entirely ignorant of reading and writing. He knew something of figures, but did not avail himself much of their assistance in performing the calculations which were frequently necessary in the prosecution of his mechanical designs. On these occasions his habit was to work the question by a method of his own, chiefly in his head, only setting down the results at particular stages of the operation; yet his conclusions were generally correct. His vigor of conception, in regard to machinery, was so great, that however compli cated might be the machine he had to execute, he never, except sometimes to satisfy his employers, made any drawing or model of it; but having once fixed its different parts in his mind, would construct it without any difficulty, merely from the idea of which he had thus possessed himself. When much perplexed with any problem he had to solve, his practice was to take to bed, in order to study it; and he would sometimes remain, we are told, for two or three days thus fixed to his pillow in meditation.

Had it not been for the example set by his adventurous genius, the progress of artificial navigation in Great Britain would proba bly have been timid and slow, compared to what it has been. For a long time, in all likelihood, the only canals would have been a few small ones, cut in the more level parts of the country, the benefit of each of which would have been extremely insignificant, and confined to a very narrow neighborhood. He did, in the very infancy of the art, what has not yet been outdone; struggling, indeed, with such difficulties, and triumphing over them, as could be scarcely exceeded by any his successors might have to encounter. By the boldness and success with which, in particular, he carried the grand Trunk Navigation across the elevated ground of the midland counties, he demonstrated that there was hardly any part of the island where a canal might not be formed; and, accordingly, this very central ridge, which used to be deemed so insurmountable an obstacle to the junction of the opposite coasts, is now intersected by more than twenty canals besides the one which he first drove through the barrier. It is in the conception and accomplishment of such grand and fortunate deviations from ordinary practice that we discern the power, and confess the value, of original genius.

The case of Brindley affords us a wonderful example of what the force of natural talent will sometimes do in attaining an acquaintance with particular departments of science, in the face of almost every conceivable disadvantage-where not only all education is wanting, but even all access to books.

JESSE RAMSDEN.

JESSE RAMSDEN was born in 1735, at Salterhebble, near Hali. fax, where his father kept an inn. The education he received in his boyhood embraced both a little Latin and the elements of geometry and algebra. But when he was of the usual age for being put to a business, his father took him from school, and bound him apprentice to a clothier in Halifax; and in this line he continued till he reached his twentieth year, when he came up to London, and obtained employment as a clerk in a wholesale warehouse. He held this situation for about two years and a half; but in the mean time he had industriously availed himself of what leisure he could command to renew and extend his acquaintance