e artistic stone-cutters of the Middle Ages have handed
down to our time in all Scotland.

This visit to Eskdale was really Telford's last farewell to his old
home, before setting out on a journey which was to form the
turning-point in his own history, and in the history of British
engineering as well. In Scotch phrase, he was going south. And after
taking leave of his mother (not quite for the last time) he went south
in good earnest, doing this journey on horseback; for his cousin the
steward had lent him a horse to make his way southward like a
gentleman. Telford turned where all enterprising young Scotchmen of
his time always turned: towards the unknown world of London--that world
teeming with so many possibilities of brilliant success or of miserable
squalid failure. It was the year 1782, and the young man was just
twenty-five. No sooner had he reached the great city than he began
looking about him for suitable work. He had a letter of introduction
to the architect of Somerset House, whose ornamental fronts were just
then being erected, facing the Strand and the river; and Telford was
able to get a place at once on the job as a hewer of the finer
architectural details, for which both his taste and experience well
fitted him. He spent some two years in London at this humble post as a
stone-cutter; but already he began to aspire to something better. He
earned first-class mason's wages now, and saved whatever he did not
need for daily expenses. In this respect, the improvidence of his
English fellow-workmen struck the cautious young Scotchman very
greatly. They lived, he said, from week to week entirely; any time
beyond a week seemed unfortunately to lie altogether outside the range
of their limited comprehension.

At the end of two years in London, Telford's skill and study began to
bear good fruit. His next engagement was one which raised him for the
first time in his life above the rank of a mere journeyman mason. The
honest workman had attracted the attention of competent judges. He
obtained employment as foreman of works of some important buildings in
Portsmouth Dockyard. A proud man indeed was Thomas Telford at this
change of fortune, and very proudly he wrote to his old friends in
Eskdale, with almost boyish delight, about the trust reposed in him by
the commissioners and officers, and the pains he was taking with the
task entrusted to him. For he was above all things a good workman, and
like al