tiveness and sleepless care economised as much as he could—his own wages while he was in the Duke's service being only a guinea a week!-still money was needed continually to pay the workmen and for the works, as well as the compensation to owners for the land compulsorily sold by them under the Act—and money it became exceedingly difficult to procure. The Duke wasted none upon himself, cutting down his personal expenses until his whole establishment cost only £400 a year! But the local and general disbelief in the possibility of his success told against his credit, and at last he could scarcely get a bill for £500 cashed in Liverpool.1 Many a Committee of Ways and Means was held by the Duke, Gilbert, and Brindley, over their pipes and ale, in a small public house (standing within the memory of living men, perhaps still standing) on the Moss, a mile and a half from Worsley, and often had Gilbert to ride round among the tenantry of the neighbouring districts, raising five pounds here and ten pounds there, until he had collected enough to pay the week's wages. One thing the Duke would not do, and that was mortgage his hereditary estates. Every other

1 "There is now to be seen at Worsley, in the hands of a private person, a promissory note given by the Duke, bearing interest, for as low a sum as five pounds."-Smiles, p. 396.

2 "On one of these occasions he was joined by a horseman, and, after some conversation, the meeting ended with an exchange of their respective horses. On alighting afterwards at a lonely inn, which he had not before frequented, Gilbert was surprised to be greeted with evident and mysterious marks of recognition by the landlord, and still more so when the latter expressed a hope that his journey had been successful, and that his saddle-bags were well filled. He was unable to account for the apparent acquaintance of a total stranger with the business and object of his expedition. The mystery was solved by the discovery that he had exchanged horses with a highwayman who had infested the paved lanes of Cheshire till his horse had become so well known, that its owner had found it convenient to take the first opportunity of procuring one less notorious."--Lord Ellesmere; Essays, p. 236.

resource seemed exhausted, when at last, his canal from Worsley to Manchester beginning to bring in a large annual income, he rode to London, and was successful in arranging with the banking house of Child and Co., on that security, for advances which enabled him to complete his great undertaking. The whole sum thus advanced, from first to last, was only £25,000, and that expended on all his canal operations was £220,000, less than a single year's income of more than one of the English noblemen of the present day, whom the Duke of Bridgewater's enterprise has helped to enrich. The annual revenue yielded by the Duke's canals reached ultimately £80,000.

In 1767, some five years after the passing of the Act, the new canal to Runcorn, about twenty-eight miles in length, was finished, with the exception of the series of locks which lead down to the Mersey. A lucrative traffic on the rest of the water-way had been increasing the Duke's resources when, six years or so later, the Runcorn locks, too, were completed, and Liverpool and Manchester fairly brought together. On the last day of 1772, the locks were opened, and while some hundreds of the Duke's workmen feasted at his expense on the bank, the Heart of Oak, a vessel of 50 tons burden, passed through on its way to Liverpool, amid the acclamations of a multitude of spectators gathered together from far and near. The Duke's canal-making, at least on a great scale, was at an end, and he was only 36. In developing the resources which he had created, there was, however, still much for him to do, and he did it. He bought any land with coal-seams adjoining Worsley, and expended nearly £170,000 in forming subterranean tunnels for the egress of the coals, the underground-canals which connected the various workings extending to forty miles in length. From the first he had been in the habit of actively superintending the works along the line, and to the last his canals.

were uppermost in his thoughts. A few years before his death he tried on them the experiment of steam-navigation, and long before this he had introduced passenger-boats. Meanwhile, Brindley and others were, with the aid of the share system and the associated capital of joint-stock companies, extending to the rest of the kingdom the benefits of the inland navigation, which the Duke of Bridgewater had executed, single-handed. The Grand Trunk Canal connected the Mersey with the Trent, and by-and-by other extensions united the ports of Liverpool, Hull, and Bristol. As it became evident that wherever they went canals enriched and expanded old industry, created centres of new, benefited alike manufactures and agriculture, the mill-owner and the ship-owner, and, above all, were immensely profitable to the constructors, there arose a canal-mania, resembling in kind, if not in degree, the railway-mania of later days. It began about the time of the first French Revolution, and was attended with the usual mixture of good and evil, general gain and individual loss. More than two thousand six hundred miles of canal-navigation in England alone opened up the country, and brought together producer and consumer, raw material and the machinery and industry by which it is worked up, the manufactory and the sea-port Nor has the canal been superseded by the railway. Accord ing to the late Lord Ellesmere, at a time when the Duke of Bridgewater was beginning to reap the profit of his perseverance and sacrifices, Lord Kenyon congratulated him on the result. "Yes," he replied, "we shall do well enough if we can keep clear of these d―d tramroads," da saying which, if mistaken in one sense, contained a prophesy of the greatness of railways. "Notwithstanding the great additional facilities for conveyance of merchandise, which have been provided of late years by the construction of railways, a very large proportion of the heavy carrying

trade of the country still continues to be conducted upon canals. It was, indeed, at one time proposed, during the railway mania, and that by a somewhat shrewd engineer, to fill up the canals and make railways of them! It was even predicted, during the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, that within twelve months of its opening the Bridgewater Canal would be closed, and the place of its waters be covered over with rushes. But canals have stood their ground even against railways, and the Duke's canal instead of being closed, continues to carry as much traffic as ever. It has lost the conveyance of passengers by the fly-boats, it is true, but it has retained, and in many instances increased, its traffic in minerals and merchandise. The canals have stood the competition of railways far more successfully than the old turnpike-roads, though these, too, are still in their way as indispensable as canals and railways themselves. Not less than twenty millions of traffic are estimated to be carried annually upon the canals of England alone, and this quantity is steadily increasing. 1835, before the opening of the London and Birmingham Railway, the through-tonnage carried on the Grand Junction Canal was 310,475 tons; and in 1845, after the railway had been open for ten years, the tonnage carried on the canal had increased to 480,626 tons. At a meeting of proprietors of the Birmingham Canal Navigations, held in October 1860, the chairman said the receipts for the last six months were, with one exception, the largest they had ever had."1

In

From a slim youth, the Duke of Bridgewater became, in middle and later age, a large and corpulent man. His features are said to have borne a strong resemblance to those of George III. He was careless in his dress, and usually wore a suit of brown-"something of the cut of Dr Johnson's,"

1 Smiles, p. 465.

which included dark drab breeches, fastened at the knee with silver buckles. His chief luxury was tobacco, which he used both ways, being a great smoker, but "out of doors, he snuffed, and he would pull huge pinches out of his right waistcoat-pocket, and thrust the powder up his nose, accompanying the operation with strong, short snorts." "While resident in London," according to Lord Ellesmere, from whose narrative chiefly such traits of the Duke are derived, "his social intercourse was limited within the circle of a few intimate friends, and for many years he avoided the trouble of a main part of an establishment suited to his station, by an agreement with one of these, who, for a stipulated sum, undertook to provide a daily dinner for his Grace and a certain number of guests. This engagement lasted till a late period of the Duke's life, when the death of the friend ended the contract." As he loved the useful, so he despised the ornamental, and would allow no conservatories or flower gardens at Worsley. And on his return from a visit to London, "finding some flowers which had been planted in his absence, he whipped their heads off and ordered them to be rooted up." Yet he collected, probably thinking it a good investment, one of the finest and most valuable picture galleries in Europe, "of which," says Lord Ellesmere, an accident laid the foundation." "Dining one day with his nephew, Lord Gower, afterwards Duke of Sutherland, the Duke saw and admired a picture which the latter had picked up a bargain, for some £10, at a broker's in the vicinity. You must take me,' he said, 'to that d--d fellow to-morrow.' Whether this impetuosity produced any immediate result, we are not informed, but plenty of‘d——d fellows' were doubtless not wanting to cater for the taste thus suddenly developed. Such advisers as Lord Farnborough and his nephew lent him the aid of their judgment. His purchases from Italy and Holland were judicious and

66