HISTORY OF

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intentions, lie set out on a Saturday evening after working tlie day,travelled fifty miles on foot, took a view of the mill, and returned backin time for his work on Monday morning ; informed Mr. Rennetwherein he had been deficient, and completed the engine to the entiresatisfaction of the proprietors. Besides this, he made a considerable im-provement in the prefs-paper.

Mr. Brindley engaged in the mill business on his own account, and,by many useful inventions and contrivances, advanced it to a higherdegree of perfection than it had ever attained. By degrees his famebegan to spread itself wider in the country, and his genius was nolonger confined to the particular branch of a mill-wright. In the year1752 he erected a very extraordinary water-engine at Clifton, in Lan-cashire, for the purpose of draining some coal-mines, which before wereworked at an enormous expence. The water for the use of this enginewas brought out of the river Irwell by a subterraneous tunnel, sixhundred yards in length, carried through a rock, and the wheel wasfixed thirty feet below the surface of the ground. Mr. Brindley’ssuperior skill in mechanics being now well known in that part of thekingdom, his reputation reached the metropolis, and he was employedby N. Patterson, Esq. of London, and some other gentlemen, in 1755,10execute the larger wheels for a new silk-mill, at Congleton in Cheshire.The execution of the smaller wheels, and of the more complex part ofthe machinery, was committed to another person, who had the super-intendency of the whole ; but who was not, however, equal to the un-dertaking, and confessed himself unable to complete it. The proprietorswere greatly alarmed, and called in the assistance of Mr. Brindley; butstill left the chief management to the former engineer, who refused tolet him see the whole model, and affected to treat him as a commonmechanic. Mr. Brindley, w ho, in the consciousness of genius, felt hisown superiority to the man who thus assumed an ascendancy over him,would not submit to such unworthy treatment. He told the proprie-tors, that if they would let him know what was the effect that they

wished

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