be made as complete as possible. Accordingly he was commissioned to design the Birmingham and Liverpool junction from a point on the Birmingham canal near Wolverhampton to Ellesmere Port on the Mersey, an operation by which a second communication was established between Birmingham on the one hand, and Liverpool and Manchester on the other. This was the last of Telford's canals. It is said that he declined the appointment of engineer to the projected Liverpool and Manchester railway because it might injuriously affect the interests of the canal proprietors.
Among the latest works planned by Telford, and executed after he was seventy, were the fine bridges at Tewkesbury (1826); a cast-iron bridge of one arch, and that at Gloucester (1828) of one large stone arch; the St. Katherine Docks at London, opened in 1828; the noble Dean Bridge at Edinburgh (1831); the skilfully planned North Level drainage in the Fen country (1830–4); and the great bridge over the Clyde at Glasgow (1833–5), which was not opened until rather more than a year after Telford's death. His latest professional engagement was in 1834, when, at the request of the great Duke of Wellington, as lord warden of the Cinque ports, he visited Dover and framed a plan for the improvement of its harbour.
During his latest years, when he had retired from active employment and deafness diminished his enjoyment of society, he drew up a detailed account of his chief engineering enterprises, to which he prefixed a fragment of autobiography. Telford was one of the founders, in 1818, of the society which became the Institute of Civil Engineers. He was its first president, and sedulously fostered its development, bestowing on it the nucleus of a library, and aiding strenuously in procuring for it a charter of incorporation in 1828. The institute received from him its first legacy, amounting to 2,000l.
Telford died at 24 Abingdon Street, Westminster, on 2 Sept. 1834. He was buried on 10 Sept. in Westminster Abbey, near the middle of the nave. In the east aisle of the north transept there is a fine statue of him by Bailey. A portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn belonged to Mrs. Burge in 1867 (Cat. of Portrait Exhibition at South Kensington, 1868, No. 166). A second portrait, by Lane, belongs to the Institute of Civil Engineers.
Although Telford was unmarried and his habits were inexpensive, he did not die rich. At the end of his career his investments brought him in no more than 800l. a year. He thought less of professional gain than of the benefits conferred on his country by his labours. So great was his disinterested zeal for the promotion of works of public utility that in the case of the British Fisheries Society, the promoters of which were animated more by public spirit than by the hope of profit, while acting for many years as its engineer he refused any remuneration for his labour, or even payment for the expenditure which he incurred in its service. His professional charges were so moderate that, it is said, a deputation of representative engineers once formally expostulated with him on the subject (Smiles, p. 317). He carried his indifference to money matters so far that, when making his will, he fancied himself worth only 16,000l. instead of the 30,000l. which was found to be the real amount. He was a man of a kindly and generous disposition. He showed his lifelong attachment to his native district, the scene of his humble beginnings, not merely by reproducing as soon as he became prosperous the poem on Eskdale which he had written when he was a journeyman mason, but by remitting sums of money every winter for the benefit of its poorer inhabitants. He also bequeathed to aid in one case, and to establish in another, free public libraries at Westerkirk and Langholm in his native valley.
Telford was of social disposition, a blithe companion, and full of anecdote. His personality was so attractive as considerably to increase the number of visitors to and customers of the Salopian coffee-house, afterwards the Ship hotel, which for twenty-one years he made his headquarters in London. He came to be considered a valuable fixture of the establishment. When he left it to occupy a house of his own in Abingdon Street, a new landlord of the Salopian, who had just entered into possession, was indignant. ‘What!’ he exclaimed, ‘leave the house? Why, sir, I have just paid 750l. for you!’ (Smiles, p. 302).
Telford's love of literature and of verse-writing clung to him from his early days. At one of the busiest periods of his life he is found now criticising Goethe and Kotzebue, now studying Dugald Stewart on the human mind and Alison on taste. He was the warm friend of Thomas Campbell and of Southey. He formed a strong attachment to Campbell after the appearance of the ‘Pleasures of Hope,’ and acted to him as his helpful mentor. Writing to Dr. Currie in 1802, Campbell says: ‘I have become acquainted with Telford the engineer; a fellow of infinite humour and of strong enterprising mind. He has almost made me a bridge-builder already; at least he has inspired me
