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wide, driven by the waterfall of the river Medlock. By these means the coals were rapidly raised to the higher ground, where they were sold and distributed, greatly to the convenience of those who came to purchase them.'

10. The remainder of Brindley's laborious career was occupied in canal engineering, and each successive work served to bring out more fully the remarkable qualities of the man-his exhaustless invention, his persistent energy, his resolute grappling with difficulties, and novel powers of combination. We can but enumerate the more notable of his achievements. He extended the Duke's Canal from Manchester to the Mersey at Kempstones, a project which the duke had to carry through parliament in the face of a most virulent opposition. Its course is about 24 miles long, and involves a series of engineering difficulties of no ordinary character. It is constructed nearly all the way on a dead level, and has always been considered as among the most striking evidences of Brindley's skill and genius. The Grand Trunk Canal, uniting the Mersey with the Trent, and both with the Severn, and connecting the ports of Liverpool, Hull, and Bristol, is another monument to the great engineer's genius. It starts from the Duke's Canal, at Preston-on-the-Hill, near Runcorn, passes southward by Northwich and Sandbach, cuts through the hill at Harecastle, traverses the Pottery districts of BurslemStoke, and Fenton, moves onward by Trensham and Shulborough to Haywood, follows the valley of the Trent until it turns to the north-east at Lichfield, whence it proceeds to a junction with the main river at Wilden Ferry. From this point the navigation of the Trent lies open, by way of Newark and Gainsborough, to the Humber. The first sod of this important canal was cut by Josiah Wedgwood, on July 26, 1766. Its entire length is 139 miles, and it has but 75 locks. Its whole rise, from the level of the Mersey to the summit at Harecastle, is 395 feet, and its fall from thence to the Trent at Wilden Ferry, 288 feet 8 inches. Its width is 31 feet, and its depth 5 feet. Across the Dove it is carried upon an aqueduct of 23 arches, approached by an embankment on either side, in all 14 m.

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in length. There are five tunnels, the Harecastle, 2,880 yards long; the Hermitage, 130 yards; the Barnton, 560 yards; the Saltenford, 350 yards; and the Preston-onthe-Hill, 1,241 yards.

Other canals laid out and executed by Brindley werethe Staffordshire and Worcestershire (46 m.), the Coventry (36 m.), the Birmingham (24 m.) the Droitwich (5 m.), the Oxford (82 m.), and the Chesterfield (46 m.)

11. Hard work, acting upon a constitution already weakened by constant exposure to all weathers, overthrew Brindley at a comparatively early age. He died of diabetes, at his house at Turnhurst, on September 27, 1772, in the 56th year of his age.

Brindley was one of those great geniuses who occasionally appear, to light up the age in which they live, by the force and originality of their character, quite as much as by the . lustre of their deeds and the splendour of their achievements. He seemed to arrive at his conclusions, not by the slow process of consecutive reflection, but by a sudden intuition, by a remarkable instinct which jumped at once to the end desired. His fertility of resource was equally wonderful. No difficulty could impede or delay him. A remedy was at his fingers' ends, which always proved to be the best, and indeed the only correct one that could be applied. His mode of study was eminently characteristic of the man. Having little or no assistance from books or the labours of other men,' says his brother-in-law, Mr. Henshall, '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 had been known to be there one, two, or three days, till he has 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

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AN EXAMPLE AND A WARNING.

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 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.'

12. Brindley's success in life was emphatically the result of his entire devotion of his great mental powers to the assiduous cultivation of the profession he had embraced. Taking him as an example to be followed, we may point out to our young readers an instance to be avoided, in a man of scarcely less notable intellectual gifts, which were marred and rendered nugatory by his instability of character.

'Lawrence Earnshaw, of Mottram, was a very poor man's son, and had served a seven years' apprenticeship to the trade of a tailor, after which he bound himself apprentice to a clothier for seven years; but these trades not suiting his tastes, and being of a strongly mechanical turn, he finally bound himself apprentice to a clockmaker, whom he also served for seven years. This eccentric person invented many curious and ingenious machines, which were regarded as of great merit in his time. One of these was an astronomical and geographical machine, beautifully executed, showing the earth's diurnal and annual motion, after the manner of an orrery. He was also a musical instrument maker and music teacher, a worker in metals and in wood, a painter and glazier, an optician, a bell-founder, a chemist and metallurgist, an engraver-in short, an almost universal mechanical genius. But this was his ruin. He did, or attempted to do, so much, that he never stood still and established himself in any one thing; and, notwithstanding his great ability, he died "not worth a groat,” in

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THE PATIENCE OF LABOUR.

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1764, at 60 years of age."* Of him, in a lesser degree, may be said what Robert Nicoll, the poet, said of Coleridge: What a mighty intellect was lost in that man for want of a little energy-a little determination.' Alas, how many fine intellects have been wasted in the vain attempt to spread their gold over too wide a surface! The stream, that, pent up in one narrow channel, will bear down any obstacle against which it may be directed, falls off in spray, and vapour, and wasteful waters when suffered to spread abroad wherever it may will.

EPILOGUE.

1. We have dwelt at some length upon the lives of our great inventors and distinguished engineers, upon the careers of those famous minds who have subdued matter and conquered space, because in these the rare virtues of perseverance and application are eminently displayed. In no profession, indeed, are they more needful; in none more brilliant in result. The man who bores a hole through the solid rock, or carries a massive aqueduct across an arm of the sea, or links city to city by chains of iron which bind them in indissoluble communion, must be content with a gradual progress, and work out his grand results by an accumulation of slow and elaborate processes. It is not for Humanity to imitate the Divine: 'Let there be light, and there was light.' Man builds up his mighty works by painful degrees. Inch by inch the billows are beaten back from the land; stone upon stone rises the breakwater out of the sea. Nothing great will be accomplished, nothing good, by him who is not patient in labour and constant in well-doing.

2. The men at whose history we have so briefly glanced in the preceding pages gained what the vulgar would call เ success in life.' They rose from the lowest ranks of society; they won fame and secured wealth. But think you that Brindley rejoiced most when he invested his money

*Condensed from a notice in Smiles' valuable book, the 'Lives of the Engineers.'

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BE THOROUGH, BUT NOT EXCLUSIVE.

in lucrative shares, or when the water first rolled into the Bridgewater Canal? Which was dearer to Watt?— the moment when his steam-engine stood before him, perfect, complete, a veritable living and moving thing, or the hours when he cast up the balance of his yearly profits? When Palissy saw the glaze shine upon the potsherd in his furnace, he felt a keener pleasure than all the gains of his later life procured him. It is enough, then, for the true and earnest man to succeed in accomplishing the end to which his powers have been devoted, even if his name be never trumpeted by the world's tongue, and his feet never reach the bank of a golden Pactolus! Brindley, Watt, Arkwright, Stephenson, did not measure success by the worldly standard of £ s. d.

3. But while so strongly inculcating upon our readers the absolute importance of devoting their powers to a chosen pursuit if they would satisfy themselves, or rise above the common herd, it is needful we should guard against being seriously misunderstood. All knowledge is good, and

narrow must be the intellect which can confine itself to one subject only. We do not advise the study of a special theme to the exclusion of all others; but that, while gathering information from every side, you still keep steadily in view the particular goal of your arduous pilgrimage. The river rolls onward, and still onward, to the sea, but does not disdain to drink in the streams which well through the valleys, or the torrents which leap from the mountains on its course. The late Lord Chancellor Campbell was a sound lawyer, but not the less an accomplished man of letters. Mr. Gladstone regulates the finances of the British empire, and writes treatises upon Homer. Henry Bickersteth was Master of the Rolls, and rose to the House of Peers as Baron Langdale, but he was also no indifferent physician. Watt, who invented the steam-engine, was an excellent botanist. Nasmyth, who invented the steamhammer, is an admirable artist. We might multiply examples ad libitum, but have probably said enough to show that superiority in one pursuit does not imply ignorance or neglect of every other. Only, we must be careful