EDWARDS. 



that are committed to him ; to develope and ex- 

 haust his whole soul in this work; to labour for 

 and with his pupils, to win their affection, to 

 quicken in them the love of knowledge, to inspire, 

 with every noble impulse, the breast of ingenuous 

 youth ; to raise up sound scholars for literature, 

 and devoted pastors for the church, and patriotic 

 citizens for the country, and glorious men for the 

 world; let him do this; and none shall leave 

 brighter signatures upon the record of honoured 

 and well spent lives. Let him do this, and 

 whether he sit in the chair of a university or in 

 the humblest village school, whether as a Stewart 

 and a Cousin, or as an Oberlin and a Pestalozzi, he 

 may fill the land with grateful witnesses of his 

 worth, and cause a generation unborn to rise up and 

 call him blessed. 



To the friends of education, as well as to the 

 actual labourers in its cause, let us say, in fine, 

 press onward. The spread of knowledge has given 

 birth to civil liberty; the increase and improve- 

 ment of knowledge must give it stability and secu- 

 rity. The fortunes of the civilized world are now 

 embarked in this cause. The great deeps are break- 

 ing up, and the ark that is to ride out the coming 

 storm must have skill engaged in its construction, 

 and wisdom to preside at its helm. The warfare 

 of opinion is already begun ; and for its safe direc- 

 tion, knowledge must take the leading-staff. In 

 this war, not the mighty captain, but the school- 

 master is to marshal the hosts to battle. It is he 

 that is to train the minds which are to engage in 

 this contest. It is he that is to train up orators 

 and legislators, statesmen and rulers : and he, too, 

 is to form the body politic of the world. Would 

 the free spirits of the world look to the defence 

 and hope of their cause ? It is no dubious ques- 

 tion, where they must look. Their outposts are free 

 schools; their citadels are universities ; their muni- 

 tions are books; their pioneers, the religious school- 

 master and the pious pastor ; and the mighty engine 

 that is to hurl destruction upon the legions of dark- 

 ness, is the FREE PRESS. Other ages have struggled 

 with other weapons ; but the panoply of this age 

 must be knowledge : the gleaming of its armour 

 must be the light that flashes from the eye of free 

 high-minded public opinion. Call this compliment- 

 ing, call it complaisance to the base multitude, call 

 it visionary speculation, call it what you will; but 

 the doctrine is true: and, over the liberties of the 

 world, whether prostrate or triumphant, that 

 truth must rise brighter and brighter for ever. 



EDWARDS, WILLIAM, an ingenious practical 

 architect, was a native of Glamorganshire, in Wales, 

 where he was born in the year 1719. He had the 

 misfortune to lose his father, who was a farmer, 

 when he was only two years old; but his mother 

 continued to hold the farm, and was, in this man- 

 ner, enabled to bring up her family. When about 

 the age of fifteen, he first began to employ himself 

 in repairing the stone fences on the farm; and in 

 this humble species of masonry he soon acquired so 

 much expertness as to be employed by neighbour- 

 ing farmers in similar occupations. He afterwards 

 undertook to build a workshop for a neighbour, 

 and he performed his task in such a manner as 

 gained him great applause. Very soon after this, 

 he was employed to erect a mill, by which he still 

 further increased his reputation. He was now ac- 

 counted the best workman in that part of the 

 country, and being highly esteemed for integrity 

 and fidelity to his engagements, as well as for his 



skill, he had as much employment in his line of a 

 common builder as he could undertake. In his 

 twenty-seventh year, however, he was induced to 

 engage in an enterprise of a much more difficult 

 and important character than anything which he 

 had hitherto attempted. Through his native pa- 

 rish runs a river called the Taff, which flows into 

 the estuary of the Severn. It was proposed to 

 throw a bridge over this river at a particular spot, 

 where it crossed the line of an intended road ; but 

 to this design difficulties of a somewhat formidable 

 nature presented themselves, owing both to the 

 great breadth of the water, and the frequent swell- 

 ings to which it was subject. Mountains, covered 

 with wood, rose to a considerable height from both 

 its banks, which first attracted and detained every 

 approaching cloud, and then sent down its contents 

 in torrents into the river. Edwards, however, 

 undertook the task of constructing the proposed 

 bridge, though it was the first work of the kind in 

 which he had ever engaged. Accordingly in the 

 year 1746, he set to work, and, in due time, com- 

 pleted a very light and elegant bridge, of three 

 arches, which, notwithstanding that it was the 

 work of both an entirely self-taught, and an equally 

 untravelled artist, was acknowledged to be supe- 

 rior to any thing of the kind in Wales. So far his 

 success had been as perfect as any thing could be 

 desired. But his undertaking was far from being 

 yet finished. He had, both through himself and 

 his friends, given security that the work should 

 stand for seven years, and for the first two 

 years and a half of this term, all went on well. 

 There then occurred a flood of extraordinary mag- 

 nitude which swept away the whole structure. 

 This was no light misfortune in every way to poor 

 Edwards; but he did not suffer himself to be dis- 

 heartened by it, and he immediately proceeded, as 

 his contract bound him to do, to the erection of 

 another bridge. He now determined, however, to 

 span the whole width of the river, by a single arch 

 of the unexampled magnitude of 140 feet from pier 

 to pier. He finished the erection of this stupend- 

 ous arch in 1751, and had only to add the parapets, 

 when he was doomed once more to behold his 

 bridge sink into the water over which he had 

 raised it, the extraordinary weight of the masonry 

 having forced up the key-stones, and, of course, at 

 once deprived the arch of what sustained its equi- 

 poise. Heavy as was this second disappointment 

 to the hopes of the young architect, it did not 

 shake his courage any more than the former had 

 done. The reconstruction of his bridge, for the 

 third time, was immediately begun with unabated 

 spirit and confidence. Still determined to adhere 

 to his last plan of a single arch, be had now thought 

 of an ingenious contrivance for diminishing the 

 enormous weight which had formerly forced the 

 keystone out of its place. In each of the large 

 masses of masonry, called the haunches of the 

 bridge, being the parts immediately above the two 

 extremities of the arch, he opened three cylindri- 

 cal holes, which not only relieved the central part 

 of the structure from all over-pressure, but greatly 

 improved its general appearance in point of light- 

 ness and elegance. This bridge, which, at the time 

 of its erection, was the largest stone arch known to 

 exist in the world, was finished in 1755 the whole 

 undertaking having occupied the architect nine years 

 in all and it has stood ever since. Edwards af- 

 terwards built many bridges in South Wales, hav- 

 ing their arches formed of segments of much larger 



