But the young mason was beginning to discover that Eskdale
was hardly a wide enough field for his budding ambition. He could
carve the most careful headstones; he could cut the most ornamental
copings for doors or windows; he could even build a bridge across the
roaring flooded Esk; but he wanted to see a little of the great world,
and learn how men and masons went about their work in the busy centres
of the world's activity. So, like a patriotic Scotchman that he was,
he betook himself straight to Edinburgh, tramping it on foot, of
course, for railways did not yet exist, and coaches were not for the
use of such as young Thomas Telford.

He arrived in the grey old capital of Scotland in the very nick of
time. The Old Town, a tangle of narrow alleys and close courtyards,
surrounded by tall houses with endless tiers of floors, was just being
deserted by the rich and fashionable world for the New Town, which lies
beyond a broad valley on the opposite hillside, and contains numerous
streets of solid and handsome stone houses, such as are hardly to be
found in any other town in Britain, except perhaps Bath and Aberdeen.
Edinburgh is always, indeed, an interesting place for an enthusiastic
lover of building, be he architect or stonemason; for instead of being
built of brick like London and so many other English centres, it is
built partly of a fine hard local sandstone and partly of basaltic
greenstone; and besides its old churches and palaces, many of the
public buildings are particularly striking and beautiful architectural
works. But just at the moment when young Telford walked wearily into
Edinburgh at the end of his long tramp, there was plenty for a stout
strong mason to do in the long straight stone fronts of the rising New
Town. For two years, he worked away patiently at his trade in "the
grey metropolis of the North;" and he took advantage of the special
opportunities the place afforded him to learn drawing, and to make
minute sketches in detail of Holyrood Palace, Heriot's Hospital, Roslyn
Chapel, and all the other principal old buildings' in which the
neighbourhood of the capital is particularly rich. So anxious, indeed,
was the young mason to perfect himself by the study of the very best
models in his own craft, that when at the end of two years he walked
back to revisit his good mother in Eskdale, he took the opportunity of
making drawings of Melrose Abbey, the most exquisite and graceful
building that th