The coach roads were dangerous, the stage was deplorable, and everything but the scenery unpleasant. The interior and west of the country were connected with Dublin by canals cut in the time of the Irish Parliament, which followed the enterprise of the Dutch. They were looked upon at the time as feats of engineering skill, somewhat in the light that we view the Suez or Panama Canals to-day. Neville, the engineer, was the recipient of extravagant encomiums from the Lords and Commons, and his fame is embalmed in a street ballad which sings the praise of-- "Bold Neville, Who made the streams run level In that bounding river Called the Grand Canal." Nowadays we have changed all that, and Neville and his skill are as little remembered in Ireland as the military-road cutter in Scotland, of whom, to show that [Illustration: G. S. & W. R. Corridor Train.] Ireland had not the monopoly in "bulls," an English admirer wrote:-- "If you had seen those roads before they Were made, You would hold up your hands and bless General Wade." A poor Italian boy--Charles Bianconi--who tramped through the country as a print-seller, was the first, in the days of Waterloo, in the south of Ireland, to begin really that healthy competition with the mail-coaches which made straight the way for the Iron Horse. The Great Southern and Western Railway was incorporated in 1845. Mr. Under-Secretary Drummond, the English statesman who got closest to the Irish heart, was identified with the construction of the line.