mated to be carried annually upon the canals of England alone, and this quantity is steadily increasing. In 1835, before the opening of the London and Birmingham Railway, the through tonnage carried on the Grand Junction Canal was 310,475 tons; and in 1845, after the railway had been open for ten years, the tonnage carried on the canal had increased to 480,626 tons. At a meeting of proprietors of the Birmingham Canal Navigations, held in October, 1860, the chairman said, "the receipts for the last six months were, with one exception, the largest they had ever had."

Railways are a great invention, but in their day canals were as highly valued, and indeed quite as important ; and it is fitting that the men by whom they were constructed should not be forgotten. We may be apt to think lightly of the merits and achievements of the early engineers, now that works of so much greater magnitude are accomplished without difficulty. The appliances of modern mechanics enable men of this day to dwarf by comparison the achievements of their predecessors, who had obstructions to encounter which modern engineers know nothing of. The genius of the older men now seems slow, although they were the wonder of their own age. The canal, and its barges tugged along by horses, now appears a cumbersome mode of communication, beside the railway and the locomotive with its power and speed. Yet canals still are, and will long continue to form, an essential part of our great system of commercial communication,—as much as roads, railways, or the ocean itself.

1 Braithwaite Poole's 'Statistics of British Commerce.' London, 1852.

CHAPTER X.

BRINDLEY'S DEATH-CHARACTERISTICS.

very

It will be observed that Brindley's employment as an engineer extended over a wide district. Even before his employment by the Duke of Bridgewater, he was under the necessity of travelling great distances to fit up water-mills, pumping-engines, and manufacturing machinery of various kinds, in the counties of Stafford, Cheshire, and Lancashire. But when he had been appointed to superintend the construction of the Duke's canals, his engagements necessarily became of a still more engrossing character, and he had very little leisure left to devote to the affairs of private life. He lived principally at inns, in the immediate neighbourhood of his work; and though his home was at Leek, he sometimes did not visit it for weeks together. He had little time for friendship, and still less for courtship. Nevertheless, he did contrive to find time for marrying, though at a comparatively advanced period of his life. In laying out the Grand Trunk Canal, he was necessarily brought into close connection with Mr. John Henshall, of the Bent, near New Chapel, land-surveyor, who assisted him in making the survey. We find him visiting his house in September, 1762, and settling with him as to the preliminary operations. At these visits Brindley seems to have taken a special liking for Mr. Henshall's daughter Anne, then a girl at school, and when he went to see her father, he was accustomed to take a store of gingerbread for Anne in his pocket. She must have been a comely girl, judging by the portrait of her as a woman, which we have seen. In

of

course of time, the liking ripened into an attachment; and shortly after the girl had left school, at the age only nineteen, Brindley proposed to her, and was accepted. By this time he was close upon his fiftieth year, so that the union may possibly have been quite as much a matter of convenience as of love on his part. He had now left the Duke's service for the purpose of entering upon the construction of the Grand Trunk Canal, and with that object resolved to transfer his home to the immediate neighbourhood of Harecastle, as well as of his colliery at Golden Hill. Shortly after the marriage, the old mansion of Turnhurst fell vacant, and Brindley became its tenant, with his young wife. The marriage took place on the 8th December, 1765, in the parish church of Wolstanton, Brindley being described in the register as "of the parish of Leek, engineer;" but from that time until the date of his death his home was at Turnhurst.

The house at Turnhurst was a comfortable, roomy, oldfashioned dwelling, with a garden and pleasure-ground behind, and a little lake in front. It was formerly the residence of the Bellot family, and is said to have been the last house in England in which a family fool was maintained. Sir Thomas Bellot, the last of the name, was a keen sportsman, and the panels of several of the upper rooms contain pictorial records of some of his exploits in the field. In this way Sir Thomas seems to have befooled his estate, and it shortly after became the property of the Alsager family, from whom Brindley rented it. A little summer-house, standing at the corner of the outer courtyard, is still pointed out as Brindley's office, where he sketched his plans and prepared his calculations. As for his correspondence, it was nearly all conducted, subsequent to his marriage, by his wife, who, notwithstanding her youth, proved a most clever, useful, and affectionate partner.

Turnhurst was conveniently near to the works then

in

BRINDLEYS HOUSE AT TURNHURST

progress at Harecastle Tunnel, which was within easy walking distance, whilst the colliery at Golden Hill was only a few fields off. From the elevated ground at Golden Hill, the whole range of high ground may be seen under which the tunnel runs-the populous pottery towns of Tunstall and Burslem filling the valley of the Trent towards the south. At Golden Hill, Brindley carried out an idea which he had doubtless brought with him from Worsley. He and his partners had an underground canal made from the main line of the Harecastle Tunnel into their coal-mine, about a mile and a half in length; and by that tunnel the whole of the coal above that level was afterwards worked out, and conveyed away for sale in the Pottery and other districts, to the great profit of the owners as well as to the equally great convenience of the public.

These various avocations involved a great amount of labour as well as anxiety, and probably considerable tear and wear of the vital powers. But we doubt whether mere hard work ever killed any man, or whether Brindley's labours, extraordinary though they

were, would have shortened his life, but for the far more trying condition of the engineer's vocation-irregular living, exposure in all weathers, long fasting, and then, perhaps, heavy feeding when the nervous system was exhausted, together with habitual disregard of the ordinary conditions of physical health. These are the main causes of the shortness of life of most of our eminent engineers, rather than the amount and duration of their labours. Thus the constitution becomes strained, and is ever ready to break down at the weakest place. Some violation of the natural laws more flagrant than usual, or a sudden exposure to cold or wet, merely presents the opportunity for an attack of disease which the ill-used physical system is found unable to resist. Such an accidental exposure unhappily proved fatal to Brindley. While engaged one day in surveying a branch canal between Leek and Froghall, he got drenched near Ipstones, and went about for some time in his wet clothes. This he had often before done with impunity, and he might have done so again; but, unfortunately, he was put into a damp bed in the inn at Ipstones, and this proved too much for his constitution, robust though he naturally was. He became seriously ill, and was disabled from all further work.

Diabetes

shortly developed itself, and, after an illness of some duration, he expired at his house at Turnhurst, on the 27th of September, 1772, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and was interred in the burying-ground at New Chapel, a few fields distant from his dwelling.

James Brindley was probably one of the most remarkable instances of self-taught genius to be found in the whole range of biography. The impulse which he gave to social activity, and the ameliorative influence which he exercised upon the condition of his countrymen, seem out of all proportion to the meagre intellectual culture which he had received in the course