were enabled to make their nails so much cheaper by the use of splitting mills and machinery, which had completely superseded the laborious process of preparing the rods for nail-making then practised in England.
Richard Foley, having ascertained this much, determined to make himself master of the process. He suddenly disappeared from the neighbourhood of Stourbridge, and was not heard of for several years. No one knew whither he had gone, not even his own family; for he had not informed them of his intention, lest he should fail. He had little or no money in his pocket, but contrived to get to Hull, where he engaged himself on board a ship bound for a Swedish port, and worked his passage there. The only article of property which he possessed was his fiddle, and on landing in Sweden he begged and fiddled his way to the Dannemora mines, near Upsala. He was a capital musician, as well as a pleasant fellow, and soon ingratiated himself with the iron-workers. He was received into the works, to every part of which he had access; and he seized the opportunity thus afforded him of storing his mind with observations, and mastering, as he thought, the mechanism of iron splitting. After a continued stay for this purpose, he suddenly disappeared from amongst his kind friends the miners—no one knew whither.
Returned to England, he communicated the results of his voyage to Mr. Knight and another person at Stourbridge, who had sufficient confidence in him to advance the requisite funds for the purpose of erecting buildings and machinery for splitting iron by the new process. But when set to work, to the great vexation and disappointment of all, and
