whenever Brindley had some difficulty to
overcome that seemed for a time insuperable, he
went to bed upon it, and is known to have
stopped in bed two or three days till he had
quietly thought it all over and worked his way
to the solution. It is said that when he lay on
his death-bed some eager canal undertakers urged
to see him and seek from him the solution of a
problem. They had met with a serious difficulty
in the course of their canal, and must see
Mr. Brindley and get his advice. They were
admitted, and told him how at a certain place
they had laboured in vain to prevent their
canal from leaking. "Then puddle it,"
murmured Brindley. " Sir, but we have puddled
it." "Then"—and they were almost his last
words in life—"puddle it again and again."
As he had wisely invested his savings in Grand
Trunk shares, they and his share in the colliery
enabled him to leave ample provision for his
widow and two daughters.

As for the canal system that he established, it
has not been made obsolete by its strong younger
brother the railway system. The Duke's Canal
is as busy as ever. Not less than twenty
million tons of traffic are at this date carried yearly
upon the canals of England alone, and this
quantity is steadily increasing.

We have taken the facts in this account of
Brindley from a delightful popular edition of that
part of Mr. Smiles's Lives of the Engineers
which tells of him and of the earlier water
engineers. Of Mr. Smiles's Lives of George
and Robert Stephenson there is a popular
edition as a companion volume, and therein
all may read, worthily told, the tale of the
foundation and of the chief triumphs of that
new form of engineering which dealt with
water, not by the river-full but by the bucket-
full, and made a few buckets of water strong
as a river to sweep men and their goods and
their cattle in a mighty torrent from one corner
of the country to another.

        IN AND ON AN OMNIBUS.

I SUPPOSE—the lamentable failure of his
tercentenary notwithstanding—it will be
considered creditable to have shared a few thoughts
with the late Shakespeare. On more than one
occasion I have detected myself uttering
sentiments which were identical with some
enunciated by that bard, differing merely in the
language in which they were expressed, as might
be expected when it is considered that the late
Shakespeare was a poetical party: while I pride
myself on being an eminently practical man.
Besides, if I may so say, my illustrations have
been brought down to the present time, and are
impregnated with the terse wit and playful
symbolical humour of the day, whereas our
friend S.'s are, to say the truth, somewhat
rococo and old fashioned. You will see what I
mean when I quote one of my last, a saying
which was hailed with immense delight at our
club, The Odd Tricks, on Saturday: "All the
world's an omnibus!" I am aware that S. has
the same idea with regard to "a stage," but
stages do not run now, whatever they might in
S.'s time, and besides, an omnibus gives greater
variety.

I have been an omnibus rider all my life. To
be sure, I went to school in a hackney-coach,
falling on my knees in the straw at the bottom,
I remember, as the wretched horses stumbled
up Highgate Hill, and imploring a maiden aunt,
who was my conductor, to take me back, even
on the sacrifice of two bright half-crowns, which
I had received as a parting tip, and a new pair
of Wellington boots. But when I "left," I
came away in an omnibus, and at once began
my omnibus experiences. I lived then with my
mother, at Beaver Cottage, Hammersmith New
Road, and I used to go up every morning to the
Rivet and Trivet Office, Somerset House, in the
nine o'clock omnibus, every seat of which was
regularly bespoke, while the conductor
summoned his passengers by wild blasts upon a
horn, as the vehicle approached their doors.
That was two-and-twenty years ago. Every rider
in the nine o'clock omnibus, save the junior
clerk in the Rivet and Trivet department, has
taken his final ride in a vehicle of much the same
shape, but of a more sombre colour, and carrying
only one inside; and I, that identical junior,
some years retired from the service on a little
pension and a little something of my own, trying
to kill time as best I may, find no pursuit
more amusing than riding about in the different
omnibuses, and speculating on the people I meet
therein.

I am bound to say that in many respects the
omnibuses and their men are greatly improved
during my experience. The thirteenth seat,
that awful position with your back to the horses
and your face to the door, where, in a Mahomet's
coffin-like attitude, you rested on nothing, and
had to contemplate your own legs calmly floating
before you, very little below the faces of
your right and left hand neighbours, has been
abolished; a piece of cocoa-nut matting is
generally substituted for that dank straw which
smelt so horribly and clung to your boots with
such vicious perseverance; most of the windows
are, what is termed in stage-language, practicable,
and can be moved at pleasure; and a system
of ventilation in the roof is now the rule, instead
of, as in my early days, the singular exception.
Thirdly, by the salutary rule of the General
Omnibus Company, aided by the sharp notice which
the magistrates take of any impropriety, the
omnibus servants, the coachmen.and conductors,
from insolent blackguards have become, for the
most part, civil and intelligent men, while the
whole "service"—horses, harness, food, &c.—
has been placed on a greatly improved footing.
But my experience teaches me that the omnibus-
riders are very much of the same type as ever.
I still find the pleasant placid little elderly
gentleman who sits on the right hand by the
door, who always has an umbrella with a
carved ivory top, and always wears a plaited
shirt-frill, dull-grey trousers, rather short and