Canals do, indeed, belong to the past. In this respect they are entitled to be regarded with interest, and even with veneration. The Cnidians, according to Herodotus, the Bœtians, according to Strabo, the Babylonians, according to Ptolemy, and the Romans, according to Pliny, were all skilled in the art of canal-making, and employed their skill to good purpose. From those times until these the waterways of art have supplemented those of nature as handmaidens of trade and commerce, as fertilisers of the soil, and as military and strategical highways. That canals also belong to the present, Egypt, the American isthmus, Manchester, Corinth, and other places, fully prove; and, unless we greatly err, they are no less the heritage of the future. FOOTNOTES: [9] Smiles’s ‘Lives of the Engineers,’ vol. i. p. 180. [10] Judging from the diary of Mr. Justice Rokeby, which has been recently printed by Sir Henry Peek, in the time of William and Mary going circuit was arduous work, and the arrangements for reaching the scene of his labours occupied almost as much of a Judge’s attention as the execution of the Royal commission when he arrived. Mr. Justice Rokeby, according to this record (as abridged in the _Times_), usually travelled in a four-horse coach with his chamber clerk, while his groom or valet attended him on a saddle-horse, which also carried the Judge’s “portmantle.” Generally both coach and horses were hired for the occasion, the rate appearing to be about 22_s._ for each travelling day, and 12_s._ for each resting day. Sometimes the learned Judge economised by “putting a pair of his own horses to the wheel,” and had his own coachman to drive. But more than once it was necessary to take six horses in the coach, and occasionally a couple of servants on saddle-horses were in attendance. In the spring of 1692-93, “after the circuits were all settled and the term ended—viz. February 25—there fell a very great snow, which occasioned the King to issue out a proclamation, March 2, 1692-3, to alter all the circuits to later days but only the Norfolk and Oxford circuits, which continued upon their first appointment.” Mr. Justice Rokeby, being unlucky enough to be going on the Norfolk circuit, derived no benefit from the postponement, but “by reason of the badness of the ways was forced to take six horses,” so that he was “out of purse” on the circuit above 52_l._ The previous summer the waters were out, and travelling in the valley of the Thames was no easy matter. “I began my journey into this circuit (the Oxford) from London,” says the Judge, “on Monday, June 27, and baited at Maidenhead, but the waters were so great upon the road that at Colebrook they came just into the body of the coach, and we were forced to boat twice at Maidenhead, and we boated the coach, and at the second time we boated ourselves, but the coach came through the water, and it came very deep into the body of it, and that night we lay at Henley-upon-Thames, where