one end, Liverpool at the other terminus, of his great CHAP. water road. เ The successful completion of this great work necessarily encouraged the commencement of similar undertakings in other places. Brindley was himself engaged on the Grand Trunk Canal, which united the Mersey and the Trent, and similar schemes were carried out with success both by himself and the other engineers who followed in his footsteps. The country became thoroughly opened up in all directions by about 2,600 miles of navigable canals in England, 276 miles in Ireland, and 225 miles in Scotland.' At the beginning of the present century,' says Dr. Aiken, writing in 1795, it was thought a most arduous task to make a high road practicable for carriages over the hills and moors which separate Lancashire from Yorkshire, and now they are pierced through by three navigable canals.'1 'It is probable,' to quote a striking observation of Sir James Mackintosh, that the quantity of labour employed in England on docks, canals, and other useful works during the last fifty years (17601810) is greater than that employed on all the boasted works of Asia, from the Wall of China to the Pyramids '2 I. The introduction of canals into England was due to the ingenuity and perseverance of Brindley; another great engineer, soon afterwards, effected a new and different improvement in locomotion. Roads are apparently one Roads. of the simplest contrivances, which man has adopted, for the development of the resources of a country; but good roads were one of the very last improvements which were introduced into modern Europe. The Romans, indeed, carried their great military roads through every country which they conquered: and every traveller has seen, and every map of England bears traces of, the admirable thoroughfares which were thus constructed throughout the country. But the art of road-making fell into decay 2 Mackintosh, vol. ii. p. 78. Smiles Brindley, p. 298. CHAP. in the Middle Ages, and, in the eighteenth century, the best roads were little better than bridle tracks, obstructed with mud at one period of the year, and with deep and dangerous ruts at another. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century attention was seriously directed to the loss and delay which bad roads occasioned;1 but it was not till the latter half of it that a very remarkable man first proved the possibility of constructing better highways. John Metcalf, the son of poor parents in Knaresborough, had the misfortune to lose his sight in 1723, when he was only six years old. But the boy, notwithstanding this loss, joined in the rough sports of his playmates. He climbed trees, and, guided by the directions of his comrades, actually took birds' nests; he learned to swim, and saved the lives of some of his companions; he rode and won a race at Harrogate; walked alone and found his way to London; married, and maintained his wife and himself with his fiddle. In 1765 Parliament passed an Act authorising the construction of a new turnpike road between Harrogate and Boroughbridge, and Metcalf offered to make three miles of the road, and completed his work with unusual speed. Encouraged by his success, he undertook to build a bridge at Boroughbridge: the trustees let him the work, which he again succeeded in completing satisfactorily. His success on these two occasions led to his constant employment : 180 miles of road were constructed by him; the Huddersfield and Manchester road was carried by him over a bog which had been thought impracticable; and, what is more extraordinary, the blind man not only carried out 'the highways designed for him by other surveyors, but himself personally surveyed and laid out many of the most importants roads which he constructed.'2 1 See, inter alia, Meteyard's Wedgwood, vol. i. p. 267. 2 Smiles' Telford, p. 89, to which I am indebted for many of the preceding details. I. While Metcalf was making his three miles of highway CHAP. between Harrogate and Boroughbridge, Thomas Telford, the only son of a poor widow, was herding sheep in Eskdale, and gaining some slight instruction in the parish school of Westerkirk. At fifteen he had passed from the sheep walk to a mason's at Lochmaben, and was diligently learning his master's business in the daytime, and reading books in the evening, lent to him by a kind lady who lived in the neighbourhood. Even at that time, an obscure mason's apprentice, in a then remote valley, he seems to have had faith in his own industry and in his own abilities. Nor pass the tentie curious lad, Who o'er the ingle hangs his head, Thy country's sons, who far are spread, So wrote he in rhyme-which proves that his education had not been useless-to Burns. At twenty-five years of age, or in 1782, Telford set out for London, where he was employed, as an ordinary mason, on Somerset House. The excellence of his workmanship probably commended him to his employers, for, in 1784, he was engaged to superintend some works at Portsmouth. In 1786 he removed to Shropshire to advise Mr. Pulteney, the member for Shrewsbury, on some alterations which he intended to make in the castle. While at Shrewsbury, Mr. Pulteney's influence gained him an appointment as surveyor of public works to the county; and he became involved in the miscellaneous business connected with this office;-prison building, bridge repairing, road improving. This appointment, however, was in its turn rapidly succeeded by another. Brindley's success had led to the construction of new canals in every part of the kingdom. It was decided to СНАР. I. unite the Mersey, the Don, and the Severn, with a water road; and Telford was made engineer of the new canal at a salary of 500l. a year. The construction of this canal, or the Ellesmere Canal, as it is called, at once placed Telford at the very summit of his profession. The magnificent aqueducts, by which it is carried over the Ceriog and the Dee, far surpassed anything which had, up to that time, been attempted; and even now rank among the very greatest achievements of our engineers. But Telford, in the meanwhile, had the merit of gaining distinction in another field. His duties as a county surveyor necessarily compelled him to turn his attention to bridge building; and his experience on the Ellesmere Canal taught him the use which might be made of iron for the purpose. An iron bridge had been erected in 1779 in Coalbrookdale; in 1787 the notorious Tom Paine proposed to bridge the Schuylkill in Philadelphia with a single iron arch of 400 feet span. The bridge, which he had designed for the purpose, was rearranged by Burdon, and placed across the Wear at Sunderland in 1796. In the same year in which the bridge at Sunderland was erected, Telford constructed the first of his numerous iron bridges at Buildwas. The possibility of using iron for such a purpose materially facilitated the progress of road improvement, in which, during the rest of his life, Telford was so busily occupied. The roads before Telford's time had three different defects. In the first place they were badly engineered. No one had yet mastered the lesson, which might have been learned from every milkpail, that the handle is no longer when it is lying flat on the pail than when it is held in the dairymaid's hand; and that a flat road going round a hill need not necessarily be longer than a steep incline going over it. In the next place the roads were imperfectly constructed. They were so narrow that there was not room for two vehicles to pass; they were so flat or hollow that the rain did not run off them; and the metalling was so rotten that they were almost impassable. In the third place, there were no bridges with which the rivers could be crossed; and a high flood put an absolute bar to the communication between the most important towns. It, indeed, no longer took, as it had taken seventy years before, two whole days to go from Birmingham to London in the summer season.1 But, at the time at which this history opens, the communication between London and Dublin and London and Edinburgh was most imperfect. A parliamentary committee declared in 1814 the road between Carlisle and Glasgow to be in so ruinous a state as often seriously to delay the mail, and endanger the lives of the passengers.' In 1815 the Irish mail took forty-one hours to reach Holyhead from the time of its setting out from St. Martin's-leGrand.' It was natural that Telford's assistance should be invoked, both to remedy the roads in Wales, and the roads in Scotland. He was employed by the Government to open up the Highlands; and 920 miles of road were made, and 1,200 bridges were built, in eighteen years, viz. from 1802 to 1820, under his supervision. The new roads changed the aspect of the country. Agriculture made rapid progress. The use of carts became practicable, and manure was no longer carried to the fields on women's backs. Sloth and idleness gradually disappeared before the energy, activity, and industry which were called into life by improved communications. Better built cottages took the place of the old mud biggins with holes in their roof to let out the smoke. The pigs and cattle were treated to a separate table. The dunghill was turned to the outside of the house. Tartan tatters gave place to the produce of Manchester and Glasgow looms; and very soon few young 1 Meteyard's Wedgwood, vol. i. p. 243, note. СНАР. I. |