paid a trifle to break or spread stones in order to keep them from being burdens to the parish in the workhouse. These surveyors were appointed and work done in fear of the parishes being indicted and heavily fined for the dangerous condition of their roads, but it is obvious that they must have been very badly repaired in those times. Nowadays the roads are all highways, since the turnpikes have been abolished, and their repair, outside the boroughs, is the business of the County Councils. II BEFORE Macadam and Telford appeared upon the scene, the office of road-surveyor was very generally looked down upon. No self-respecting engineer, before the time of these great men, condescended to have anything to do with roads. It is true that a forerunner of Macadam and Telford had appeared in Yorkshire in 1765, when “Blind Jack of Knaresborough” began the construction of the Boroughbridge and Harrogate road, the first of the long series for which he contracted; but he was not an official road-surveyor, nor by profession an engineer. He was, in fact, an engineer born and wholly untaught. John Metcalf, the famous blind roadmaker, was born in 1717, and lost his eyesight at six years of age. A native of Knaresborough, he filled in his time many parts; being fiddler, huckster, soldier, carrier, proprietor of the first stage-wagon between York and Knaresborough, and road and bridge maker and contractor by turns. The marvellous instinct which served him instead of sight is scarce credible, but is well authenticated. He joined Thornton’s company of Yorkshire volunteers raised at Boroughbridge to meet the Scots rebels in the ’45, and marched with them and played them into action at Falkirk. His marvellous adventures have no place here, but his solitary walk from London to Harrogate in 1741 concerns the Great North Road. Being in London, and returning at the same time, Colonel Liddell of Harrogate offered Blind Jack a seat behind his carriage, which Metcalf declined, saying that he could easily walk as far in a day as the colonel could go in his carriage with post-horses. This incidentally shows us how utterly vile the roads were at the time. Metcalf, although blind and unused to the road, having travelled up to London by sea, walked back, and easily reached Harrogate before the colonel, who posted all the way.