cessors might have to encounter. By the boldness and success with which, in particular, he carried the Grand Trunk Navigation across the elevated ground of the midland counties, he demonstrated that there was hardly any part of the island where a canal might not be formed; and, accordingly, this very central ridge, which used to be deemed so insurmountable an obstacle to the junction of our opposite coasts, is now intersected by more than twenty canals beside the one which he first drove through the barrier. It is in the conception and accomplishment of such grand and fortunate deviations from ordinary practice that we discern the power, and confess the value, of original genius.

The case of Brindley affords us a wonderful example of what the force of natural talent will sometimes do in attaining an acquaintance with particular departments of science, in the face of almost every conceivable disadvantage-where not only all education is wanting, but even all access to books. Nor is he the only celebrated practical mechanician that might be named, whose inventive faculties have been successfully exercised without any help from literature. The French engineer, SWALM RENKIN, or RANNEQUIN, as he is more commonly called, who, in the reign of Louis XIV., constructed the famous machine of Marli for raising the water of the Seine to the gardens of Versailles, was originally only a common carpenter at Liege, where he was born about the middle of the seventeenth century, and had no means of acquiring knowledge except in the work-shop and by his own reflection. A learned contemporary writer, Professor Weidler of Wittemberg, describes him by the Greek epithet avaλpaßntos — ignorant even of the alphabet. Yet the apparatus which he erected at Versailles, and which was of extraordinary complexity, was regarded

in that age as the greatest mechanical wonder in the world. It raised water from the Seine to the height of four hundred and seventy-six feet above the level of the river. The Italian engineer, NICHOLAS ZABAGLIA, who was born at Rome in 1674, was also originally a poor working carpenter, and altogether uneducated. In this capacity he was first employed at the Vatican; and yet he was eventually appointed to preside over the building of St. Peter's, where he did not, however, confine himself to the duties of superintendence and direction, but continued to work with his own hands as before. Zabaglia was the author of many mechanical contrivances, distinguished for their simplicity and elegance. He was the contemporary of BARTHOLOMEW FERRACINO, another self-taught mechanician of great genius. Ferracino was bred a sawyer, in which occupation he was employed while very young, and when the severe labour was almost too much for his strength. He at length, however, contrived a saw which moved by the wind, and did his work for him. After this, he invented many other ingenious machines, and acquired a distinguished reputation in various departments of practical mechanics. The great clock in the Place of St. Mark, at Venice, was constructed by him. But his greatest work was the bridge over the Brenta, near his native town of Bassano, which has been much celebrated. Ferracino was quite ignorant of books; and when his friends would sometimes judiciously advise him to give his great natural powers fair play, by applying himself to the regular study of the principles of mechanical science, he used to say, with a foolish laugh, which his ignorance alone could excuse, that nature had been a very good teacher to him, and that he had all the book he wanted in his head. Our own country

man, the celebrated JOHN HARRISON, who, in 1767, obtained the parliamentary reward of twenty thousand pounds for the invention of his admirable timepiece for ascertaining the longitude at sea, may be quoted as another example of self-taught genius, but not so entirely unaided by books. He was born at Pontefract, in Yorkshire, in 1693, and was bred a carpenter; yet he very early manifested a taste for mathematical science, which is said to have been first awakened by a manuscript copy of some lectures of Saunderson (the blind mathematician), that accidentally fell into his hands; and it should seem that he was not so entirely without education as to be unable to peruse and profit by them. Before he was twenty-one, he had made two wooden clocks by himself, and without having received any instructions in the art. We have, in a former chapter, mentioned the circumstance of his having been first induced to think of applying himself to the construction of marine chronometers by living for some time in sight of the sea. It was in 1728 that he first came up to London, in order to prosecute this object; but he had to devote to it the anxious labours of nearly forty years before his inventions were perfected, or their general merit fully recognized. The art of watchmaking owes several valuable improvements to Harrison; among which may be particularly mentioned the gridiron pendulum, and the expansion balance-wheel-the one serving to equalize the movements of a clock, and the other those of a watch, under all changes of temperature-and both depending upon the unequal stretching under change of temperature of two different metals, which are so employed to form the rod of the pendulum and the circumference of the wheel, that the contraction of the one exactly counterbalances the expansion of the other. Although, however, a most skilful and inge

nious artist, Harrison never acquired any acquaintance with literature; and a little work, which he published in his old age, in explanation of some of his ideas on the construction of time-pieces, is miserably ill-written. He died in London, in 1776, at the age of eighty-three.

Of these, and all such instances, it may safely be remarked that, far from proving the inutility of scientific acquirements, they only show how far, in one particular line, natural genius can carry its possessors without cultivation; and make us regret their having wanted those helps which, even in that line, would have carried them so much farther.

CHAPTER XX.

Knowledge of Languages. Magliabecchi; Hill; Wild; Aram; Purver; Pendrell.

Ir mechanical invention does not necessarily imply much study of books, and may seem, on that account, a province of intellectual exertion fitted for persons who have not enjoyed the advantages of a regular education, as being one in which natural sagacity and ingenuity, as much as literary attainments, are requisite to ensure advancement, the same thing can hardly be said of another department, in which selftaught genius has frequently made extraordinary progress; we mean the study of languages. This is the sort of knowledge, indeed, which, in common parlance, is more peculiarly called learning. Its acquisition, in the circumstances alluded to, can only be the result of a love for, and familiarity with, books, and of what we may call the literary habit thoroughly formed.

There are three purposes for which languages may be studied, independently of their gratifying that general desire of information which makes both the acquirement and the possession of all knowledge delightful. One use, and an infinitely important one, to be made of the knowledge of languages, is the study of that intellectual mechanism by which they have been formed, and of which they present us, as it were, with the impress or picture. Another department of philosophy to which this knowledge is a key, is that relating to the early his