130 YOUNG RENNIE AT SCHOOL, PART VII . 



accuracy of his information. He seems to have been 

 provoked beyond measure by the incompetency of his 

 own workmen. " Our millwrights," he wrote to his 

 partner, " have kept working, working, at the corn-mill 

 ever since you went away, and it is not yet finished ; 

 but my patience being exhausted, I have told them that 

 it must be at an end to-morrow, done or undone. There 

 is no end of millwrights once you give them leave to set 

 about what they call machinery ; here they have multi- 

 plied wheels upon wheels until it has now almost as 

 many as an orrery." l 



Watt himself had bat little knowledge of millwork, 

 and stood greatly in need of some able and intelligent 

 millwright to take charge of the fitting up of the Albion 

 Mills. Young Kennie seemed to him at the time to be 

 a very likely person ; but, with characteristic caution, 

 he said nothing of his intentions, but determined to 

 write privately to his friend Robison upon the subject, 

 requesting particularly to know his opinion as to the 

 young man's qualifications for taking the superintend- 

 ence of such important works. Dr. Robison' s answer 

 was most decided ; his opinion of Rennie's character and 

 ability was so favourable, and expressed in so confident 

 a tone, that Watt no longer hesitated ; and he shortly 

 after wrote to the young engineer, when he had returned 

 home, inviting him to undertake the supervision of the 

 proposed mills, so far as concerned the planning and 

 erection of the requisite machinery. 



Watt's invitation found Rennie in full employment 

 again. He was engaged in designing and erecting 

 mills and machinery of various kinds. Amongst his 

 earlier works, we also find him, in 1784, when only 

 in his twenty-third year, occupied in superintending 

 the building of his first bridge the humble forerunner 

 of a series of structures which have not been surpassed 



1 Muirhcad, vol. ii., p. 177. 



