continuation of the attentions he so much needed; and the prospect before him was as gloomy as it is possible to imagine. He has expressed the feelings with which he looked forward to the future at this time in some very pathetic verses, which are to be found among his printed poems. He was not, however, left long without a protector. His case having reached the ear of Dr. Stephenson, one of the Medical Professors in the University of Edinburgh, that gentleman generously invited him to come to the Scottish metropolis, where he engaged to find him the means of pursuing his studies at College. Blacklock gladly accepted this liberal offer. While in Edinburgh, he availed himself with eagerness of every opportunity of improvement which presented itself. Thus, for instance, he acquired a familiarity with the French language, by conversing with a lady of his acquaintance, who was a native of France. When he had been a few years at the University, he published, at the suggestion of his friends, a volume of poems; and this attracted to him the more general notice of the literary world. Among others whose attention was drawn to the productions of the blind poet was Mr. Spence, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, who published a critical review of them, accompanied by a sketch of their author's history, which had a great effect in making him more extensively known. In the meanwhile, Blacklock continued his studies at Edinburgh, until he had finished the usual course of education prescribed to candidates for the ministry in the Scotch Church, which occupied him ten years. In 1754 a second edition of his poems was published by subscription; and having been a few years afterwards licenced by the Presbytery as a preacher, he was inducted to the church of Kirkcudbright, on the presentation of the Earl of Selkirk. So much opposition, however, was made

by the inhabitants of the place to this arrangement for giving them a blind clergyman, that Blacklock was soon induced to resign his appointment for a small annuity. With this provision he returned to Edinburgh; and being now married, opened an establishment for receiving boarders, whose studies he proposed to superintend. In this occupation, and in a variety of literary pursuits, he spent his remaining life, and died at Edinburgh in 1791. He had received the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1766, and may be said to have eventually attained a highly respectable place among the literary characters of his time, although his poetry does not indicate a great deal of power. He possessed, however, we are told, wonderful facility in verse-making, and used sometimes to dictate thirty or forty verses to his friends almost as fast as they could be written down. His chief enjoyments were conversation and music; and although not unvisited by occasional depression of spirits, he was generally cheerful, and seemed, indeed, to enjoy life as much upon the whole as any of his friends whom nature had more bountifully endowed. One of the most interesting of Dr. Blacklock's productions is his paper, to which we have already more than once referred, on the Blind, in the Encyclopædia Britannica. He produced, also, a few other performances in prose of greater extent.

At this time, too, lived a female writer of verses, who was also blind, Miss ANNA WILLIAMS. This lady came to London in 1730, when only twentyfour years of age, with her father, a Welsh surgeon, who had given up his profession in consequence of imagining that he had discovered a method of finding the longitude at sea, which would make his fortune. After many efforts, however, to obtain the patronage of Government for his scheme, and having exhausted his resources, he was obliged to

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take refuge in the Charter-house. His daughter, who had been liberally educated, and had at first mixed in all the gaieties of the metropolis, was now obliged to support both him and herself by working at her needle. But after struggling in this way for some years, she lost her sight by a cataract. Her situation, it might be imagined, was now both helpless and hopeless in the extreme; but a strong mind enabled her to rise above her calamity. She not only continued the exercise of her needle, we are told, with as much activity and skill as ever, but never suffering her spirits to droop, distinguished herself just as she had been used to do, by the neatness of her dress, and preserved all her old attachment to literature. In 1746, after she had been six years blind, she published a translation from the French of La Bleterie's Life of the Emperor Julian.' Her father having some time after this met with Dr. Johnson, told him his story, and in mentioning his daughter, gave so interesting an account of her, that the Doctor expressed himself desirous of making her acquaintance, and eventually invited her to reside in his house as a companion to his wife. Mrs. Johnson died soon after; but Miss Williams continued to reside with the Doctor till her death, in 1783, at the age of 77. In 1752 an attempt was made to restore her sight by the operation of couching, but without success. We find her father publishing, three years later, an account of his method for discovering the longitude; and about the same time, Garrick gave the daughter a benefit at Drury Lane, which produced her two hundred pounds. Miss Williams also appeared again as an authoress, in 1766, when she published a volume, entitled, 'Miscellanies in Prose and Verse,' written partly by herself, and partly by several of her friends.

One of the most ingenious and original works ever written upon the habits and natural history of insects,

is the 'Recherches sur les Abeilles' of M. HUBER, of Geneva, who had been reduced to a state of complete blindness, by gutta serena, at the age of seventeen. He was assisted in his observations by his wife, an admirable woman, who made it the business of her life to contrive the means of alleviating her husband's misfortune, and for whom, indeed, it has been said, he was indebted chiefly to his blindness; as although an attachment had existed between them previously, the lady's friends were so much opposed to the match, that she would probably have been induced to listen to the addresses of another suitor, had not Huber's helpless condition awakened a sympathy she could not resist, and determined her, at all hazards, to unite herself to him. Madame Ducrest, who, in her late Memoirs of the Empress Josephine, relates this anecdote, knew M. Huber and his wife; and nothing, she assures us, could exceed either the unwearied attention of the latter to every wish and feeling of her husband, or the happiness which, notwithstanding his blindness, he seemed in consequence to enjoy. During the war, we are told, Madame Huber used to put her husband in possession of the movements of the armies by arranging squadrons of pins on a map, in such a manner as to represent the different bodies of troops. A method was also invented by which he was enabled to write; and his wife used to form plans of the towns they inhabited, in relief, for him to study by the touch. In short, so many ways did her affection find of gladdening his darkened existence, that he was wont to declare he should be miserable were he to cease to be blind. "I should not know," said he, "to what extent a person in my situation could be beloved; besides, to me my wife is always young, fresh, and pretty, which is no light matter* "

*Memoires sur Josephine, tom. i.

CHAPTER XIX.

Account of James Brindley; Canals.

JAMES BRINDLEY, the celebrated engineer, was entirely self-taught in even the rudiments of mechanical science, although, unfortunately, we are not in possession of any very minute details of the manner in which his powerful genius first found its way to the knowledge of those laws of nature of which it afterwards made so many admirable applications. He was born at Tunsted, in the parish of Wormhill, Derbyshire, in the year 1716; and all we know of the first seventeen years of his life, is, that his father having reduced himself to extreme poverty by his dissipated habits, he was allowed to grow up almost totally uneducated, and, from the time he was able to do any thing, was employed in the ordinary descriptions of country labour. To the end of his life this great genius was barely able to read on any very pressing occasion; for, generally speaking, he would no more have thought of looking into a book for any information he wanted, than of seeking for it in the heart of a millstone: and his knowledge of the art of writing hardly extended farther than the accomplishment of signing his name. It is probable, that as he grew towards manhood, he began to feel himself created for higher things than driving a cart or following a plough; and we may even venture to conjecture, that the particular bias of his genius to