rmanent usefulness to
unborn thousands of his fellow-creatures.

As a canal-maker, Telford was hardly less successful than as a
constructor of roads and harbours. It is true, his greatest work in
this direction was in one sense a failure. He was employed by
Government for many years as the engineer of the Caledonian Canal,
which runs up the Great Glen of Caledonia, connecting the line of lakes
whose basins occupy that deep hollow in the Highland ranges, and so
avoiding the difficult and dangerous sea voyage round the stormy
northern capes of Caithness. Unfortunately, though the canal as an
engineering work proved to be of the most successful character, it has
never succeeded as a commercial undertaking. It was built just at the
exact moment when steamboats were on the point of revolutionizing ocean
traffic; and so, though in itself a magnificent and lordly undertaking,
it failed to satisfy the sanguine hopes of its projectors. But though
Telford felt most bitterly the unavoidable ill success of this great
scheme, he might well have comforted himself by the good results of his
canal-building elsewhere. He went to Sweden to lay out the Gotha
Canal, which still forms the main high-road of commerce between
Stockholm and the sea; while in England itself some of his works in
this direction--such as the improvements on the Birmingham Canal, with
its immense tunnel--may fairly be considered as the direct precursors
of the great railway efforts of the succeeding generation.

The most remarkable of all Telford's designs, however, and the one
which most immediately paved the way for the railway system, was his
magnificent Holyhead Road. This wonderful highway he carried through
the very midst of the Welsh mountains, at a comparatively level height
for its whole distance, in order to form a main road from London to
Ireland. On this road occurs Telford's masterpiece of engineering, the
Menai suspension bridge, long regarded as one of the wonders of the
world, and still one of the most beautiful suspension bridges in all
Europe. Hardly less admirable, however, in its own way is the other
suspension bridge which he erected at Conway, to carry his road across
the mouth of the estuary, beside the grey old castle, with which its
charming design harmonizes so well. Even now it is impossible to drive
or walk along this famous and picturesque highway without being struck
at every turn by the splendid engineering triumphs which it