JAMES BRINDLEY. 63 



amply repaid for this outlay and temporary sacrifice ; but the 

 compensation that eventually accrued to him he never might 

 have lived to enjoy ; and .at all events, he acted as none but extra- 

 ordinary men do, in thus voluntarily relinquishing the present 

 for the future, and preferring to any dissipation of his wealth 

 on passing and merely personal objects, the creation of this 

 magnificent monument of lasting public usefulness.^ Nor was 

 it only in the liberality of his expenditure that thg duke 

 approved himself a patron worthy of Brindley. He supported 

 his engineer throughout the undertaking with unflinching 

 spirit, in the face of no little outcry and ridicule, to which the 

 imagined extravagance or impracticability of many of his plans 

 exposed him — and that even from those who were generally 

 accounted the most scientific judges of such matters. The 

 success with which these plans were carried into execution is, 

 probably in no slight degree, to be attributed to the perfect con- 

 fidence with which their author was thus enabled to proceed. 



We have entered at the greater length into the history of 

 this undertaking, both because it was the first of a succession 

 of works of the same description, in which the great engineer 

 of whom we are speaking displayed the unrivalled hardihood, 



^ Francis, Duke of Bridgewater, died in 1803, at the age of 67, when 

 the ducal title became extinct, ^nd the earldom passed to his cousin, 

 General Egerton. The income arising from his canal property alone was 

 understood to be, at the time of his death, between ;^5o,ooo and ;[^8o,ooo 

 per annum — a large revenue, but not amounting, although we add to it the 

 rents of his other estates, to anything like that assigned to this nobleman, 

 by the writer of his life, in the Biographic Universelle, who informs us that 

 the income-tax which he paid every year amounted alone to ;i^l 10,000 

 sterling. ' La somme qu'il payait, chaque annee, pour sa portion dans la 

 taxe du revenue [income-tax) s'elevait seule a 110,000 livres st. ' The fact 

 is, that in the returns which he made under the Act imposing the tax in 

 question, the duke estimated his income at that amount. He left at his 

 death, besides his large property in land, about ^{^600.000 in the funds. 



