JAMES BRINDLEY. 



James BRINDLEY, the celebrated engineer, was 

 entirely self-taught in even the rudiments of 

 mechanical science, — although, unfortunately, we 

 are not in possession of any very minute details of the 

 manner in which his powerful genius first found its way 

 to the knowledge of those laws of nature of which it after- 

 wards made so many admirable applications. He was born 

 at Tunsted, in the parish of Wormhill, Derbyshire, in the 

 year 1716; and all we know of the first seventeen years of 

 his life is that, his father havmg reduced himself to extreme 

 poverty by his dissipated habits, he was allowed to grow up 

 almost totally uneducated, and, from the time he was able to 

 do anything, was employed in the ordinary descriptions of 

 country labour. To the end of his life this great genius was 

 barely able to read on any very pressing occasion ; for, gene- 

 rally speaking, he would no more have thought of looking 

 into a book for any information he wanted, than of seeking 

 for it in the heart of a millstone ; and his knowledge of the 

 art of writing hardly extended farther than the accomplishment 

 of signing his name. It is probable that, as he grew towards 

 manhood, he began to feel himself created for higher things 



