"The unfortunate issue of this great work," writes the present engineer of the canal, to whom we are indebted for many of the preceding facts, "was a grievous disappointment to Mr. Telford, and was in fact the one great bitter in his otherwise unalloyed cup of happiness and prosperity. The undertaking was maligned by thousands who knew nothing of its character. It became 'a dog with a bad name,' and all the proverbial consequences followed. The most absurd errors and misconceptions were propagated respecting it from year to year, and it was impossible during Telford's lifetime to stem the torrent of popular prejudice and objurgation. It must, however, be admitted, after a long experience, that Telford was greatly over-sanguine in his expectations as to the national uses of the canal, and he was doomed to suffer acutely in his personal feelings, little though he may have been personally to blame, the consequences of what in this commercial country is regarded as so much worse than a crime, namely, a financial mistake."*[2] Mr. Telford's great sensitiveness made him feel the ill success of this enterprise far more than most other men would have done. He was accustomed to throw himself into the projects on which he was employed with an enthusiasm almost poetic. He regarded them not merely as so much engineering, but as works which were to be instrumental in opening up the communications of the country and extending its civilization. Viewed in this light, his canals, roads, bridges, and harbours were unquestionably of great national importance, though their commercial results might not in all cases justify the estimates of their projectors. To refer to like instances--no one can doubt the immense value and public uses of Mr. Rennie's Waterloo Bridge or Mr. Robert Stephenson's Britannia and Victoria Bridges, though every one knows that, commercially, they have been failures. But it is probable that neither of these eminent engineers gave himself anything like the anxious concern that Telford did about the financial issue of his undertaking. Were railway engineers to fret and vex themselves about the commercial value of the schemes in which they have been engaged, there are few of them but would be so haunted by the ghosts of wrecked speculations that they could scarcely lay their heads upon their pillows for a single night in peace.