History of Madeley: including Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, and Coalport — John Shaqi
History of Madeley: including Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, and CoalportRandall, John
History
History of Madeley: including Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, and Coalport
Randall, John
Madeley (Shropshire, England) -- History
patience and of our gratitude and obedience! Whilst with an
appropriation of sentiment which receives propriety from the
consciousness of our unworthiness, we substitute a particular for the
general exclamation of humble admiration, in the word of the
psalmist—‘Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son
of man that thou (thus) visitest him?’ The romantic scenes of
Benthall Edge,—its rocks and precipices, its sides and top covered
with wood; the navigable Severn, in which its feet are immersed; the
populousness of the opposite shore; the motion, noise, and life on
the river; the adjoining wharves and manufactories, are capable of
affording a high entertainment, and I should willingly devote one day
in the year to a repetition of the enjoyments of the pleasures I have
heretofore received from them: though equally near, and equally
desirable, a jaunt to Benthall Edge is not equally facile with one to
the Wrekin. It seems more out of my province.”
Our readers, ere this, must have discovered a power of description, a
grace and polish, blended with a masculine force of thought, in the
correspondence of Mr. Reynolds, of a more than common order; and would
still more, could we feel at liberty to quote more copiously from
numerous letters to his friends. If we follow him more closely into
private life, and lift the veil that too often hides a dualism of
character from the unsuspicious public eye, we find the sterling elements
of the gentleman and the Christian.
Take the experience of the past as recorded, or the traditions of the
present, as found among a generation second in remove from Richard
Reynolds’s time, and they bring out into relief still more striking
traits of character, that do honour to our common nature. The guiding
principle of his life, in all cases of bargain and of sale, Mrs. Rathbone
tells us, were in accordance with the old adage—“Live and let live;” and
as an instance of the consistency with which he acted up to his motto she
adds that, at the breaking out of the American war, when bar-iron rose to
an extravagant price, and the makers of pig-iron could obtain their own
terms, instead of taking an unreasonable advantage of the opportunity, he
proposed to his customers that it should be left to one of themselves to
name a fair price for pig-iron in the _then state_ of the trade, and to
determine the scale of proportionate reduction which should take place
when the price of bar-iron should fall, as he foresaw that it would
follow the _then_ great and unsatisfied demand. The proposal was
accepted, and by the scale which was then fixed his conduct was governed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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