Company and the benefit of the public; the price of these articles having already in some places been reduced twenty-five, and in others as much as fifty, per cent. "The canal affairs," he says in one of his letters, "have required a good deal of exertion, though we are on the whole doing well. But, besides carrying on the works, it is now necessary to bestow considerable attention on the creating and guiding of a trade upon those portions which are executed. This involves various considerations, and many contending and sometimes clashing interests. In short, it is the working of a great machine: in the first place, to draw money out of the pockets of a numerous proprietary to make an expensive canal, and then to make the money return into their pockets by the creation of a business upon that canal." But, as if all this business were not enough, he was occupied at the same time in writing a book upon the subject of Mills. In the year 1796 he had undertaken to draw up a paper on this topic for the Board of Agriculture, and by degrees it had grown into a large quarto volume, illustrated by upwards of thirty plates. He was also reading extensively in his few leisure moments; and among the solid works which he perused we find him mentioning Robertson's 'Disquisitions on Ancient India,' Stewart's 'Philosophy of the Human Mind,' and Alison's 'Principles of Taste.' As a relief from these graver studies, he seems, above all things, to have taken peculiar pleasure" In occasionally throwing off a bit of poetry. Thus, when laid up at an hotel in Chester by a blow on his leg, which disabled him for some weeks, he employed part of his time in writing his 'Verses on hearing of the Death of Robert Burns.' On another occasion, when on his way to London, and detained for a night at Stratford-on-Avon, he occupied the evening at his inn in composing some stanzas, entitled 'An Address to the River Avon.' And when on his way back to Shrewsbury, while resting for the night at Bridgenorth, he amused himself with revising and copying out the verses for the perusal of Andrew Little. "There are worse employments," he said,"when one has an hour to spare from business;" and he asked his friend's opinion of the composition. It seems to have been no more favourable than the verses deserved; for, in his next letter, Telford says, "I think your observation respecting the verses to the Avon are correct. It is but seldom I have time to versify; but it is to me something like what a fiddle is to others, I apply to it in order to relieve my mind, after being much fatigued with close attention to business."