the material which was to relieve him from the poverty which at this time made his home desolate. "I put," he says, "my vessels into the furnaces, to bake and melt the enamel which I had spread over them; but it was an unhappy thing for me, for, though I spent six days and nights before the said furnace, it was not possible to make the said enamels melt, and I was like a man in a desperation; and although quite stupified with labour, I counselled with myself that in my enamel there might be too little of the substance which should make the others melt; and seeing this, I began once more to pound and grind the before-named materials all the time, without letting my furnace cool. In this way I had double labour, to pound, grind, and maintain the fire." Again, we find the experiment is made, but his supply of fuel fails, and we have him in his own graphic language saying, "I was forced to burn the palings which maintained the boundary of my garden, which being burnt also, I was forced to burn the tables and the flooring of my house to cause the melting of the second composition. I suffered an anguish that I cannot speak, for I was quite exhausted and dried up with the heat of the furnace; it was more than a month since my shirt was dry upon me. Further to console me, I was the object of mockery, and even those from whom solace was due ran crying through the town that I was burning my floors! Others said that I was labouring to make false money, which was a scandal under which I pined away, and slipped with bowed head through the streets like a man put to shame. When I had dwelt with my regrets a little, because there was no one who had pity upon me, I said to my soul, 'Wherefore art thou saddened since thou hast found the object of thy search? Labour now and the defamers will live to be ashamed,'" And he did labour, and his defamers did live to be ashamed. Even when another failure, through the rudeness of the materials

his necessities compelled him to employ, had struck down his hopes and still further mortified his wounded spirit, he refused to sell the spoiled productions of his glowing fancy and prodigal genius at a reduced rate, but under the presentiment that princes were to be his patrons and monarchs his paymasters, he worked on, and

"Bated not a jot

Of heart or hope; but still bore up and steered
Right onward.”

No cry of despair escaped from him, and he triumphed as few men have triumphed before. His name became famous throughout France, and the "Palissy ware," the production of ten years of unrelaxed exertion, severe suffering, and unshrinking perseverance, became at once the subject of princely demand and European admiration. He passed this fiery ordeal unhurt and unscathed, a brilliant example and a burning light to those who have unshaken faith in the power of endurance, and a firm belief in the virtue of industry. I now propose to call your attention during the short period which remains to me, to the remarkable career of two of our own countrymen, who exhausted the unsurpassed energy of their original, patient, and laborious minds, upon the land which gave them birth, a land which they benefited not more by their wondrous skill and marvellous industry, than by the influence they exercised over the age in which they lived, by rendering their discoveries in the domain of science, subservient to the wants, the desires, and the necessities of daily life. A century since, and the means of transit by canals in this country were unknown. Like the Athenian Minerva, fabled to have sprung from the brain of Jupiter completely armed, the canal system in England may be said to have originated and perfected itself in the large and fruitful mind of one man. Born in a remote district in Derbyshire, his father drunken in his habits, and therefore misery

stricken and helplessly poor, neglected, untaught, and uncared for, young James Brindley grew up like a weed by the road-side, uneducated. Up to seventeen years of age, he was employed as an agricultural labourer, engaged in the simplest duties of field-work. At this juncture of his life, and in this apparently hopeless position, we find genius vindicating its mission. The bias of his mind towards mechanical pursuits had become the subject of remark, and the offer of a millwright to apprentice him to that business was accepted by the incipient engineer with feelings of more than delight. His surprising aptitude in overcoming obstacles, combined with his unrelaxing habits of application, had now full scope, and at this period of his active life, he was unconsciously laying the foundation of that widely spread fame which always awaits the meritorious, the patient, and the industrious. The year 1755 witnessed the first attempt to cut a canal in England. The legislature had given powers to render a small river, which ran through a portion of the Lancashire coal field, navigable. It was at this moment that we find the toiling, hard-handed, hard-headed Brindley brought into contact with Francis Egerton, Duke of Bridgewater, who formed the resolution of constructing a navigable canal through the heart of his coal fields to that already crowded bee-hive of human industry and, even then, metropolis of cotton manufacturesManchester. We may imagine, for language would fail to describe, the glow of honest exultation which lit up the face of Brindley, when the project was submitted to him by his noble patron. New to this kind of engineering-having no example to guide him, he proceeded, confident in his strength, to survey the country through which the projected canal was to be carried, meeting the fears of his friends with the calm assurance of success, and the sneers of his professional rivals with the cool indifference of conscious power. Never faltering for a moment,

and never blundering for an instant, men saw with admiring wonder the silvery line of water-course running side by side, in the fertile valley, with the overflowing river-now entering into the dark and cavernous depths of the mountain side, again emerging into the cheerful light, and carried upon arches whose graceful span gave new forms of beauty to the sylvan scenery to which they added novel features of pleasing and graphic combination. It was in the conduct of this unprecedented and gigantic undertaking, that we can measure the value of perseverance, and appreciate the worth of moral courage. We are at a loss which more to admire, the selfreliance, dauntless spirit, and exhaustless ingenuity of Brindley, or the unswerving constancy, sagacious foresight, and unshaken confidence of his noble patron. The history of self-sacrifice in the attainment of a public object, offers no parallel instance like that furnished by the Duke of Bridgewater. At length completed, the success of the experiment surpassed the most sanguine expectations of its promoters. As if by magic the exhausted exchequer of the spirited nobleman was filled by the Pactolean stream, which seemed to deepen in volume as it flowed. Within five years from this period the country beheld with mingled surprise and admiration the manufacturing districts of the north brought into connection with the metropolis in the south, and Bristol in the west. The effect of the canal system in Manchester was to reduce at once the cost of coals to the poor from 7d. a cwt. to 3 d., while upon the carriage of merchandise between Liverpool and Manchester, the effect was still more striking, the carriage by land being 40s. a ton, while by the Duke's canal, as it is still called, the charge was 6s. The struggling manufacturer felt at once a heavy weight removed from the spring of his industry, and a wider field. opened for the employment of his capital, while the toiling artisan, and the labouring peasant enjoyed

in the cheerful blaze which gladdened their hearthstone, and threw its genial warmth into shivering limbs, comfort that resulted from the triumph of enterprise over timidity, and the victory of vigorous genius over prejudiced mediocrity. The country rang with the praises of two men whose names became household words, and whose mission to the popular mind appeared to shed a sunny light over the darkened pathway of the poor man's daily life. From the time of the completion of his first great undertaking, Brindley's career was a continuous series of engineering triumphs. Crowds flocked from all parts to witness operations not more novel than interesting. While he with an intrepidity which no difficulty could subdue, and an enthusiasm which no influence could weaken, gathering strength from failure and power from experience, continued constructing canal after canal, until little was left to be cared or wished for in the further development of inland navigation. Such was the man whose vigorous and masculine intellect gave a fresh impulse to the spirit of progress in the age in which he lived, and whose instructive career is full of suggestive encouragement to him who, doubting, fearing, faltering, forgets that in his mental constitution exist the same elements of intellectual power, and the same conditions of success, but who, yielding to indolence and irresolution, overlooks the teaching that

"The fault is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Like our system of inland navigation, the cotton tree dates its origin from the impulsive and enterprising spirit of the last century. To most of you present it is superfluous to tell you that, up to this time, the manipulation of cotton was confined to its conversion into lamp-wicks. Flax and the wool from the sheep formed the staple out of which the daily increasing population of England was clothed. The supply of the raw material was not equal to the de