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 the Strand and
the river; and Telford was able to get a place at once on the job as a
hewer of the finer architectural details, for which both his taste and
experience well fitted him. He spent some two years in London at this
humble post as a stone-cutter; but already he began to aspire to
something better. He earned first-class mason's wages now, and saved
whatever he did not need for daily expenses. In this respect, the
improvidence of his English fellow-workmen struck the cautious young