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When one thinks how large a number of human beings have been benefited by Telford's Scotch harbour works alone, it is impossible not to envy a great engineer his almost unlimited power of permanent 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 would not appear that after making these disbursements much would remain for Telford's own labour; but in those days engineers were satisfied with comparatively small pay, and did not dream of making large fortunes.
But Telford, even more than any of these, was a purely country-bred boy, and was born and brought up in a valley so secluded that it could not even boast of a cluster of houses of the dimensions of a village. Telford's father was a herd on the sheep-farm of Glendinning.
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.
The scheme, for some good reason, doubtless, was not adopted; but it is impossible to look at Telford's grand drawing of the proposed bridge a single bold arch, curving across the Thames from side to side, with the dome of St Paul's rising majestically above it without a feeling of regret that such a noble piece of theoretical architecture was never realized in actual fact.
But the most important, as it was the last, of Mr. Telford's stone bridges was that erected across the Clyde at the Broomielaw, Glasgow. Little more than fifty years since, the banks of the river at that place were literally covered with broom and hence its name while the stream was scarcely deep enough to float a herring-buss.
The story went about so quickly, and so much interest was excited because the Hudson Bay company sent an officer down to bury him, and the new formed Aurora company was represented by two or three titled directors, that Mark Telford's body was followed to its grave by hundreds of people. It was never known to the public that he had contemplated suicide.
Though this plan was approved by the parties interested in the drainage, to Telford's great mortification it was opposed by the corporation of Wisbeach, and like so many other excellent schemes for the improvement of the Fen districts, it eventually fell to the ground.
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.
The bottom of the harbour was accordingly deepened by cutting out 30,000 cubic yards of rocky ground; and part of Mr. Rennie's design was carried out by extending the jetty of the west pier, though only for a distance of twenty yards. These works were executed under Mr. Telford's directions; they were completed by the end of the year 1811, and proved to be of great public convenience.
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