timber in favour of that of Canada. He himself reaped little pecuniary profit from the time and labour which he devoted to the canal. As its engineer-in-chief during twenty-one years he received in that capacity only 237l. per annum.
While engaged in these Scottish undertakings, Telford was also busily occupied in England. He had numerous engagements to construct and improve canals. In two instances he was called on to follow, with improved machinery and appliances, where Brindley had led the way. One was the substitution of a new tunnel for that which had been made by Brindley, but had become inadequate, at Harecastle Hill in Staffordshire on the Grand Junction canal; another was the improvement, sometimes amounting to reconstruction, of Brindley's Birmingham canal, which at the point of its entrance into Birmingham had become ‘little better than a crooked ditch.’ Long before this Telford's reputation as a canal-maker had procured him a continental reputation. In 1808–10 he planned and personally contributed to the construction of the Gotha canal, to complete the communication between the Baltic and the North Sea. Presenting difficulties similar to those which he had overcome in the case of the Caledonian canal, the work was on a much larger scale, the length of the artificial canal which had to be made to connect the lakes being 55 miles, and that of the whole navigation 120 miles. In Sweden he was fêted as a public benefactor, and the king conferred on him the Swedish order of knighthood, honours of a kind never bestowed on him at home.
The improvement of old and the construction of new roads in England were required by the industrial development of the country, bringing with it an increased need for safe and rapid postal communication. A parliamentary committee in 1814 having reported on the ruinous and dangerous state of the roads between Carlisle and Glasgow, the legislature found it desirable, from the national importance of the route, to vote 50,000l. for its improvement. Sixty-nine miles, two-thirds of the new and improved road, were placed under Telford's charge, and, like all his English roads, it was constructed with a solidity greater than that obtained by the subsequent and more popular system of Macadam. Of Telford's other English road improvements the most noticeable were those through which the mountainous regions of North Wales were permeated by roads with their accompanying bridges, while through the creation of a new and safe route, under the direction of a parliamentary commission, from Shrewsbury to Holyhead, communication between London and Dublin, to say nothing of the benefits conferred on the districts traversed, was greatly facilitated. But the very increase of traffic thus caused made only more apparent the inconvenience and peril attached to the transit of passengers and goods in open ferry-boats over the dangerous straits of Menai. It was resolved that they should be bridged. The task having been entrusted to Telford, the execution of it was one of his greatest engineering achievements.
Telford's design for the Menai bridge was based on the suspension principle, of which few English engineers had hitherto made any practical trial. Telford's application of it at Menai was on a scale of enormous magnitude. When it had been approved by eminent experts, and recommended by a select committee of the House of Commons, parliament granted the money required for the execution of the scheme. The main chains of wrought iron on which the roadway was to be laid were sixteen in number, and the distance between the piers which supported them was no less than 550 feet; the pyramids, this being the form which the piers assumed at their utmost elevation, were 53 feet above the level of the roadway, and the height of each of the two principal piers on which the main chains of the bridge were to be suspended was 153 feet. The first stone of the main pier was laid in August 1819, but it was not until six years afterwards that things were sufficiently advanced for the difficult operation of hoisting into position the first of the main chains, weighing 23½ tons between the points of suspension. On 26 April 1825 an enormous assemblage on the banks of the straits witnessed the operation, and hailed its success with loud and prolonged cheering. Telford himself had come from London to Bangor to superintend the operations. Anxiety respecting their result had kept him sleepless for weeks. It is said that when on the eventful day some friends came to congratulate him on his success, they found him on his knees engaged in prayer. Soon afterwards, in 1826, Telford erected a suspension bridge on the same principle as that at Menai over the estuary of the Conway.
During the speculative mania of 1825–6 a good many railways were projected, among them one in 1825 for a line from London to Liverpool. The canal proprietors, alarmed at the threatened competition with their water-ways, consulted Telford, whose advice was that the existing canal systems should
