Telford was justly proud of his canals, which were the finest works of their kind that had yet been executed in England. Capacious, convenient, and substantial, they embodied his most ingenious contrivances, and his highest engineering skill. Hence we find him writing to a friend at Langholm, that, so soon as he could find "sufficient leisure from his various avocations in his own unrivalled and beloved island," it was his intention to visit France and Italy, for the purpose of ascertaining what foreigners had been able to accomplish, compared with ourselves, in the construction of canals, bridges, and harbours. "I have no doubt," said he, "as to their inferiority. During the war just brought to a close, England has not only been able to guard her own head and to carry on a gigantic struggle, but at the same time to construct canals, roads, harbours, bridges--magnificent works of peace--the like of which are probably not to be found in the world. Are not these things worthy of a nation's pride?" Footnotes for Chapter X. *[1] Mr. Matthew Davidson, above referred to, was an excellent officer, but a strange cynical humourist in his way. He was a Lowlander, and had lived for some time in England, at the Pont Cysylltau works, where he had acquired a taste for English comforts, and returned to the North with a considerable contempt for the Highland people amongst whom he was stationed. He is said to have very much resembled Dr. Johnson in person and was so fond of books, and so well read in them, that he was called 'the Walking Library.' He used to say that if justice were done to the inhabitants of Inverness, there would be nobody left there in twenty years but the Provost and the hangman. Seeing an artist one day making a sketch in the mountains, he said it was the first time he had known what the hills were good for. And when some one was complaining of the weather in the Highlands, he looked sarcastically round, and observed that the rain certainly would not hurt the heather crop.