This was his last piece of professional work. A few months later he was laid up by bilious derangement of a serious character, which recurred with increased violence towards the close of the year; and on the 2nd of September, 1834, Thomas Telford closed his useful and honoured career, at the advanced age of seventy-seven. With that absence of ostentation which characterised him through life, he directed that his remains should be laid, without ceremony, in the burial ground of the parish church of St. Margaret's, Westminster. But the members of the Institute of Civil Engineers, who justly deemed him their benefactor and chief ornament, urged upon his executors the propriety of interring him in Westminster Abbey. [Image] Telford's Burial Place in Westminster Abbey He was buried there accordingly, near the middle of the nave; where the letters, "Thomas Telford, 1834, mark the place beneath which he lies.*[5] The adjoining stone bears the inscription, "Robert Stephenson, 1859," that engineer having during his life expressed the wish that his body should be laid near that of Telford; and the son of the Killingworth engineman thus sleeps by the side of the son of the Eskdale shepherd. It was a long, a successful, and a useful life which thus ended. Every step in his upward career, from the poor peasant's hut in Eskdale to Westminster Abbey, was nobly and valorously won. The man was diligent and conscientious; whether as a working mason hewing stone blocks at Somerset House, as a foreman of builders at Portsmouth, as a road surveyor at Shrewsbury, or as an engineer of bridges, canals, docks, and harbours. The success which followed his efforts was thoroughly well-deserved. He was laborious, pains-taking, and skilful; but, what was better, he was honest and upright. He was a most reliable man; and hence he came to be extensively trusted. Whatever he undertook, he endeavoured to excel in. He would be a first-rate hewer, and he became one. He was himself accustomed to attribute much of his success to the thorough way in which he had mastered the humble beginnings of this trade. He was even of opinion that the course of manual training he had undergone, and the drudgery, as some would call it, of daily labour --first as an apprentice, and afterwards as a journeyman mason-- had been of greater service to him than if he had passed through the curriculum of a University.