This success encouraged others to proceed in the same course; and in 1765 a subscription was raised, and an Act of Parliament procured, for uniting the rivers Mersey and Trent, and consequently the ports of Liverpool and Hull, by what is commonly called the Grand Trunk Canal. Brindley bestowed this name upon it, in the expectation that, traversing a large and important portion of our manufacturing district, it would be the main trunk, from which a number of minor branches would spring. The scheme had been projected so early as 1755, and the ground surveyed, which for the most part offered little difficulty. But there was one line of high ground, called Harecastle Hill, which could neither be turned nor surmounted by any expedient that former engineers could devise. Brindley overcame the obstacle by driving a tunnel through it, upwards of a mile and five furlongs in length, and in some parts seventy yards below the surface of the ground. This canal, which is ninety-three miles long, was begun in 1766, and finished in May, 1777, less than eleven years after its commencement. In connexion with it, Brindley planned and executed a branch which joined the Severn, and thus gave Bristol an inland navigation to Hull, Liverpool, and Manchester. Some notion may be formed of the impulse which Brindley’s energy and skill gave to the system of internal navigation, when it is stated that during the few years which elapsed between the completion of the Bridgewater Canal, and his death in 1772, he was engaged in at least eighteen different projects for cutting canals, or for improving rivers, without including those we have already mentioned. The mere names of these would be matter of little interest; they may be seen in the Biographia Britannica. Nor shall we now be expected to dwell on the unprecedented increase of trade and manufactures during the last century, and to point out how closely this is connected with our great facilities of internal communication. One thing, however, is too remarkable to be passed over: it was as nearly as possible at the same time that Watt, Arkwright, and Brindley, were effecting, each in his own department, those wonderful improvements in mechanical science, which conjointly have given such vast extent and importance to all branches of our manufactures, and which singly would have been, as it were, each of them crippled and imperfect. Of Brindley’s private history, scarcely any particulars are preserved. The following account of his character is stated by Dr. Kippis to proceed from the pen of Mr. Bentley, a partner in the celebrated house of Wedgwood, who knew him well:—