stout strong mason to do in the long straight stone fronts of the
rising New Town. For two years, he worked away patiently at his
trade in "the grey metropolis of the North;" and he took advantage
of the special opportunities the place afforded him to learn
drawing, and to make minute sketches in detail of Holyrood Palace,
Heriot's Hospital, Roslyn Chapel, and all the other principal old
buildings' in which the neighbourhood of the capital is particularly
rich. So anxious, indeed, was the young mason to perfect himself by
the study of the very best models in his own craft, that when at the
end of two years he walked back to revisit his good mother in
Eskdale, he took the opportunity of making drawings of Melrose
Abbey, the most exquisite and graceful building that the artistic
stone-cutters of the Middle Ages have handed down to our time in all
Scotland.

This visit to Eskdale was really Telford's last farewell to his old
home, before setting out on a journey which was to form the
turning-point in his own history, and in the history of British
engineering as well. In Scotch phrase, he was going south. And
after taking leave of his mother (not quite for the last time) he
went south in good earnest, doing this journey on horseback; for
his cousin the steward had lent him a horse to make his way
southward like a gentleman. Telford turned where all enterprising
young Scotchmen of his time always turned: towards the unknown
world of London--that world teeming with so many possibilities of
brilliant success or of miserable squalid failure. It was the year
1782, and the young man was just twenty-five. No sooner had he
reached the great city than he began looking about him for suitable
work. He had a letter of introduction to the architect of Somerset
House, whose ornamental fronts were just then being erected, facing