appointed to arrange for all necessary road improvements, having certain privileges vested in them for the purpose. Thus, they recommended that certain trusts should have loans granted to them, to be employed in road-making and mending. Mr. Telford, at his death, was largely employed by the Road Commissioners--the improvements on the Shrewsbury and Holyhead road being under his entire superintendence. And it would seem that the above-mentioned road needed improvement. When, in 1808, a new mail-coach was put on to run between the two places, no fewer than twenty-two townships had to be indicted by the Post-Office authorities for having their roads in a dangerous and unfinished state. In Scotland and Ireland, great improvements had also been made in this respect, considering the previously wretched state of both countries, Scotland especially. At a somewhat earlier period, four miles of the best post-road in Scotland--namely, that between Edinburgh and Berwick--were described in a contemporary record as being in so ruinous a state, that passengers were afraid of their lives, "either by their coaches overturning, their horses stumbling, their carts breaking, or their loads casting, and the poor people with burdens on their backs sorely grieved and discouraged;" moreover, "strangers do often exclaim thereat," as well they might. Things were different at the close of the last century; still, the difficulties encountered in travelling, say by the Bar, may well serve to show the internal state of the country. "Those who are born to modern travelling," says Lord Cockburn,[63] "can scarcely be made to understand how the previous age got on. There was no bridge over the Tay at Dunkeld, or over the Spey at Fochabers, or over the Findhorn at Forres. Nothing but wretched peerless ferries, let to poor cotters, who rowed, or hauled, or pushed a crazy boat across, or more commonly got their wives to do it.... There was no mail-coach north of Aberdeen till after the battle of Waterloo.... I understand from Hope, that after 1784, when he came to the bar, he and Braxfield rode a whole north circuit; and that, from the Findhorn being in a flood, they were obliged to go up its bank for about _twenty-eight miles_, to the Bridge of Dulsie, before they could cross. I myself rode circuits when I was an Advocate Depute, between 1807 and 1810." A day and a half was still, at the end of the last century, taken up between Edinburgh and Glasgow. In 1788, a direct mail-coach was put on between London and Glasgow, to go by what is known as the west coast route, _viâ_ Carlisle.[64] The Glasgow merchants had long wished for such a communication, as much time was lost in going by way of Edinburgh. On the day on which the first mail-coach was expected, a vast number of them went along the road for several miles to welcome it, and then headed the procession into the city. To announce its arrival on subsequent occasions, a gun was fired. It was found a difficult task,