gave him little opportunity to develop his full talents as a born
engineer. But in time, being found faithful in small things, his
employers, the county magistrates, began to consult him more and
more on matters of comparative importance. First, it was a bridge
to be built across the Severn; then a church to be planned at
Shrewsbury, and next, a second church in Coalbrookdale. If he was
thus to be made suddenly into an architect, Telford thought, almost
without being consulted in the matter, he must certainly set out to
study architecture. So, with characteristic vigour, he went to
work to visit London, Worcester, Gloucester, Bath, and Oxford, at
each place taking care to learn whatever was to be learned in the
practice of his new art. Fortunately, however, for Telford and for
England, it was not architecture in the strict sense that he was
finally to practise as a real profession. Another accident, as
thoughtless people might call it, led him to adopt engineering in
the end as the path in life he elected to follow. In 1793, he was
appointed engineer to the projected Ellesmere Canal.

In the days before railways, such a canal as this was an
engineering work of the very first importance. It was to connect
the Mersey, the Dee, and the Severn, and it passed over ground
which rendered necessary some immense aqueducts on a scale never
before attempted by British engineers. Even in our own time, every
traveller by the Great Western line between Chester and Shrewsbury
must have observed on his right two magnificent ranges as high
arches, which are as noticeable now as ever for their boldness,
their magnitude, and their exquisite construction. The first of
these mighty archways is the Pont Cysylltau aqueduct which carries
the Ellesmere Canal across the wide valley of the Dee, known as the
Vale of Llangollen; the second is the Chirk aqueduct, which takes