The excellence of the roads constructed by Mr. Telford through the formerly inaccessible counties of North Wales was the theme of general praise; and their superiority, compared with those of the richer and more level districts in the midland and western English counties, becoming the subject of public comment, he was called upon to execute like improvements upon that part of the post-road which extended between Shrewsbury and the metropolis. A careful survey was made of the several routes from London northward by Shrewsbury as far as Liverpool; and the short line by Coventry, being 153 miles from London to Shrewsbury, was selected as the one to be improved to the utmost. Down to 1819, the road between London and Coventry was in a very bad state, being so laid as to become a heavy slough in wet weather. There were many steep hills which required to be cut down, in some parts of deep clay, in others of deep sand. A mail-coach had been tried to Banbury; but the road below Aylesbury was so bad, that the Post-office authorities were obliged to give it up. The twelve miles from Towcester to Daventry were still worse. The line of way was covered with banks of dirt; in winter it was a puddle of from four to six inches deep--quite as bad as it had been in Arthur Young's time; and when horses passed along the road, they came out of it a mass of mud and mire.*[7] There were also several steep and dangerous hills to be crossed; and the loss of horses by fatigue in travelling by that route at the time was very great. Even the roads in the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis were little better, those under the Highgate and Hampstead trust being pronounced in a wretched state. They were badly formed, on a clay bottom, and being undrained, were almost always wet and sloppy. The gravel was usually tumbled on and spread unbroken, so that the materials, instead of becoming consolidated, were only rolled about by the wheels of the carriages passing over them. Mr. Telford applied the same methods in the reconstruction of these roads that he had already adopted in Scotland and Wales, and the same improvement was shortly felt in the more easy passage over them of vehicles of all sorts, and in the great acceleration of the mail service. At the same time, the line along the coast from Bangor, by Conway, Abergele, St. Asaph, and Holywell, to Chester, was greatly improved. As forming the mail road from Dublin to Liverpool, it was considered of importance to render it as safe and level as possible. The principal new cuts on this line were those along the rugged skirts of the huge Penmaen-Mawr; around the base of Penmaen-Bach to the town of Conway; and between St. Asaph and Holywell, to ease the ascent of Rhyall Hill.