INLAND NAVIGATION.

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tending to save great expence and trouble: and here it may 1 not be im-proper to insert some particulars of the life of this extraordinary me-chanic, extracted from the Biograpbia Bntannica.

Mr. JAMES BRINDLEY, a man of a most uncommon genius formechanical inventions, and who particularly excelled in planning andconducting inland navigations, was born at Tunsted, in the parish ofWormhill, and county of Derby, in the year 1716. His parents dis-sipated away the little freehold they were possessed of, and young Brind-ley was totally neglected in education, and in his earliest part of lifecontributed to their support, and till he was seventeen years of age wasemployed in those light kinds of labour which are usually assigned incountry places to the children of the poor. At this period of his lifehe bound himself apprentice to one Bennet, a mill-wright, near Mac-clesfield in Cheshire, and became very expert in the business : hequickly discovered a strong attachment to the mechanic arts in general:in the early part of his apprenticeship he was often left for whole weekstogether by his master, without any previous instructions, who wasoften astonished at the improvements he had introduced into the mill-wright business; and the millers, wherever he was employed, alwayschose him in preference to his master, or any other workman.

It may not be amiss to mention a singular instance of our young me-chanic’s active and earnest attention to the improvement of mill-work.His master having been employed to build an engine paper-mill, whichwas the first of the kind that had been attempted in those parts, wentto fee one of them at work, as a model to copy after. But notwith-standing this, when he hAd begun to build the mill, and prepare thewheels, the people of the neighbourhood were informed by a mill-wright, who happened to travel that road, that Mr. Bennet was throw-ing his employers’ money away, and could not complete what he hadundertaken. Mr. Brindley, hearing of this report, was resolved to feethe mill intended to be copied ; accordingly, without mentioning his

N intentions,