Biographies of Working Men | Page 5

disappointment much too
keenly, as though he himself had been to blame for their
miscalculations or over-sanguine hopes. Still, it is a good thing to put
one's heart in one's work, and so much Thomas Telford certainly did.
About this time, too, the rising young mason began to feel that he must
get a little more accurate scientific knowledge. The period for general
study had now passed by, and the period for special trade reading had
set in. This was well. A lad cannot do better than lay a good foundation
of general knowledge and general literature during the period when he
is engaged in forming his mind: a young man once fairly launched in
life may safely confine himself for a time to the studies that bear
directly upon his own special chosen subject. The thing that Telford
began closely to investigate was--lime. Now, lime makes mortar; and
without lime, accordingly, you can have no mason. But to know
anything really about lime, Telford found he must read some chemistry;
and to know anything really about chemistry he must work at it hard
and unremittingly. A strict attention to one's own business, understood
in this very broad and liberal manner, is certainly no bad thing for any
struggling handicraftsman, whatever his trade or profession may
happen to be.
In 1786, when Telford was nearly thirty, a piece of unexpected good

luck fell to his lot. And yet it was not so much good luck as due
recognition of his sterling qualities by a wealthy and appreciative
person. Long before, while he was still in Eskdale, one Mr. Pulteney, a
man of social importance, who had a large house in the bleak northern
valley, had asked his advice about the repairs of his own mansion. We
may be sure that Telford did his work on that occasion carefully and
well; for now, when Mr. Pulteney wished to restore the ruins of
Shrewsbury Castle as a dwelling-house, he sought out the young mason
who had attended to his Scotch property, and asked him to superintend
the proposed alterations in his Shropshire castle. Nor was that all: by
Mr. Pulteney's influence, Telford was shortly afterwards appointed to
be county surveyor of public works, having under his care all the roads,
bridges, gaols, and public buildings in the whole of Shropshire. Thus
the Eskdale shepherd-boy rose at last from the rank of a working mason,
and attained the well-earned dignity of an engineer and a professional
man.
Telford had now a fair opportunity of showing the real stuff of which
he was made. Those, of course, were the days when railroads had not
yet been dreamt of; when even roads were few and bad; when
communications generally were still in a very disorderly and
unorganized condition. It is Telford's special glory that he reformed and
altered this whole state of things; he reduced the roads of half Britain to
system and order; he made the finest highways and bridges then ever
constructed; and by his magnificent engineering works, especially his
aqueducts, he paved the way unconsciously but surely for the future
railways. If it had not been for such great undertakings as Telford's
Holyhead Road, which familiarized men's minds with costly
engineering operations, it is probable that projectors would long have
stood aghast at the alarming expense of a nearly level iron road running
through tall hills and over broad rivers the whole way from London to
Manchester.
At first, Telford's work as county surveyor lay mostly in very small
things indeed--mere repairs of sidepaths or bridges, which gave him
little opportunity to develop his full talents as a born engineer. But in
time, being found faithful in small things, his employers, the county
magistrates, began to consult him more and more on matters of
comparative importance. First, it was a bridge to be built across the

Severn; then a church to be planned at Shrewsbury, and next, a second
church in Coalbrookdale. If he was thus to be made suddenly into an
architect, Telford thought, almost without being consulted in the matter,
he must certainly set out to study architecture. So, with characteristic
vigour, he went to work to visit London, Worcester, Gloucester, Bath,
and Oxford, at each place taking care to learn whatever was to be
learned in the practice of his new art. Fortunately, however, for Telford
and for England, it was not architecture in the strict sense that he was
finally to practise as a real profession. Another accident, as thoughtless
people might call it, led him to adopt engineering in the end as the path
in life he elected to follow. In 1793, he was appointed engineer to the
projected Ellesmere Canal.
In the days before railways, such a canal as this was an engineering
work of the very first