In any case, he changed his mind in time, and was again taken on as exciseman.

Likewise, he was again dismissed.
This time they fired him for advocating higher wages and writing a pamphlet on the subject.

The reform fever had caught him, you perceive, and he was nevermore free from it, to the day of his death.
He was a brilliant mathematician and an ingenious inventor.

Brailsford says that his inventions were "partly useful, partly whimsical." They would be, of course.

They included a crane, a planing-machine, a smokeless candle and a gunpowder motor--besides his really big and notable invention of the first iron bridge.
[Illustration: 59, GROVE STREET.