In the following year we find our engineer consulted, at the instance of the King of Sweden, on the best mode of constructing the Gotha Canal, between Lake Wenern and the Baltic, to complete the communication with the North Sea. In 1808, at the invitation of Count Platen, Mr. Telford visited Sweden and made a careful survey of the district. The service occupied him and his assistants two months, after which he prepared and sent in a series of detailed plans and sections, together with an elaborate report on the subject. His plans having been adopted, he again visited Sweden in 1810, to inspect the excavations which had already been begun, when he supplied the drawings for the locks and bridges. With the sanction of the British Government, he at the same time furnished the Swedish contractors with patterns of the most improved tools used in canal making, and took with him a number of experienced lock-makers and navvies for the purpose of instructing the native workmen. The construction of the Gotha Canal was an undertaking of great magnitude and difficulty, similar in many respects to the Caledonian Canal, though much more extensive. The length of artificial canal was 55 miles, and of the whole navigation, including the lakes, 120 miles. The locks are 120 feet long and 24 feet broad; the width of the canal at bottom being 42 feet, and the depth of water 10 feet. The results, so far as the engineer was concerned, were much more satisfactory than in the case of the Caledonian Canal. While in the one case he had much obloquy to suffer for the services he had given, in the other he was honoured and feted as a public benefactor, the King conferring upon him the Swedish order of knighthood, and presenting him with his portrait set in diamonds. Among the various canals throughout England which Mr. Telford was employed to construct or improve, down to the commencement of the railway era, were the Gloucester and Berkeley Canal, in 1818; the Grand Trunk Canal, in 1822; the Harecastle Tunnel, which he constructed anew, in 1824-7; the Birmingham Canal, in 1824; and the Macclesfield, and Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canals, in 1825. The Gloucester and Berkeley Canal Company had been unable to finish their works, begun some thirty years before; but with the assistance of a loan of 160,000L. from the Exchequer Bill Loan Commissioners, they were enabled to proceed with the completion of their undertaking. A capacious canal was cut from Gloucester to Sharpness Point, about eight miles down the Severn, which had the effect of greatly improving the convenience of the port of Gloucester; and by means of this navigation, ships of large burden can now avoid the circuitous and difficult passage of the higher part of the river, very much to the advantage of the trade of the place.