THOMAS ANDREW KNIGHT, ESQ. 3 



did not begin to revive till about 1750, when tbe use of pit 

 coal* in blast furnaces became general. It seems, therefore, 

 probable that Mr. Knight owed his extraordinary success solely 

 to the efforts of his own powerful mind and the enlarged views 

 by which his proceedings were directed, for it was evidently not 

 during the prosperous days of the iron trade that he made his 

 fortune, nor is it supposed that his original capital was at all 

 considerable. 



After he became a rich man, he never departed from the sim- 

 plicity of his early habits. One of his few indulgences was that 

 of riding a fine horse : and this, perhaps, may have been as much 

 dictated by prudence as pleasure, for before the establishment 

 of country banks large sums of money were necessarily trans- 

 ferred from place to place on horseback. One undoubted 

 deviation from the unostentatious mode of living attributed to 

 him has been handed down, in a magnificent silver punch-bowl, 

 capable of containing nine quarts, with the contents of which it 

 was his custom to regale himself and his friends. Many 

 anecdotes are told of this old gentleman, which, after all due 

 allowance has been made for the change of manners that the 

 lapse of two centuries has made, still show that he must have 

 been a person of very singular habits. 



On one occasion a large quantity of Russian iron was adver- 

 tised for sale at a certain inn in the city, and on the day 

 appointed, Mr. Knight arrived there meanly dressed ; and while 

 waiting for the sale to commence, he volunteered his assistance 

 to relieve a man who was employed in turning a spit on which 

 a piece of beef was roasting. While so employed, he entered 

 into conversation with the landlord, who told him that a great 



* Fuller, in his "Worthies of England," printed in 1662, indulges in the 

 following amusing anticipations on this subject : " What we may call river or 

 fresh-water coals, digged out in this county (Shropshire), at such a distance 

 from Severn that they are easily ported by boat into other countries. Oh ! 

 if this coal could be so charked as to make iron melt out of the stone, as it 

 maketh it in smiths' forges, to be wrought in the bars ! But Rome was not 

 built in a day ; and a new world of experiments is lefte to the discoverie of 

 posteritic." 



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