174 



THE WEDGWOODS. 



whole in the market-place, &feu dejoie was fired in front of 

 Mr, "Wedgwood's house, and all the usual demonstrations of 

 joy were indulged in to their hearts' content by the potters 

 of the district. 



Thus this important undertaking was fitly inaugurated by 

 the man who had taken the most active part in its pro- 

 motion, and to whom the neighbourhood was indebted for 

 so many benefits. The history of the progress of this canal, 

 which has been pleasantly and graphically told by Mr. Smiles, 

 would form a pleasing episode in the memoirs of Wedgwood, 

 but it is enough for my present purpose to say that it was 

 carried on with all the energy, and all the tact and skill, of 

 which the truly wonderful nature of Brindley was capable, 

 until his death. For six years he laboured closely and assi- 

 duously at it, and after his death, in 1772, the remaining 

 portion of the work was successfully completed by his brother- 

 in-law, John Henshall. 



The wonder with which the operations of Brindley, the 

 " Prince of Engineers," especially as regarded his immense 

 cutting of the Harecastle Tunnel, were looked upon by the 

 inhabitants of Burslem, is well told in a letter quoted by 

 Mr. Smiles, dated 1767, and written by an inhabitant of 

 Burslem to a friend in a distant part of the country. It is 

 as follows : 



" Gentlemen, Come to view our eighth wonder of the world, 

 the subterraneous navigation which is cutting by the great 

 Mr. Brindley, who handles rocks as easily as you would plum 

 pies, and makes the four elements subservient to his will. He is 

 as plain a looking man as one of the boors of the Peak,* or as one 

 of his own carters ; but when he speaks, all ears listen, and every 

 mind is filled with wonder at the things lie pronounces to be prac- 

 ticable. He has cut a mile through bogs, which he binds up, 

 embanking them with stones which he gets out of other parts of 

 the navigation, besides about a quarter of a mile into the hill 

 Yelden, on the side of which he has a pump worked by water, and 

 a stove, the fire of which sucks through a pipe the damps that 



* James Brindley was, it will be rememberer!, a native of Tunstead, in 

 the High Peak of Derbyshire. 



