374 SCOTCH INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS. PART VIII. 



CHAPTE1I VIII. 



HIGHLAND KOADS AND BRIDGES. 



IN our introduction to the Life of Rennie, we gave a 

 rapid survey of the state of Scotland about the middle 

 of last century. We found a country without roads, fields 

 lying uncultivated, mines unexplored, and all branches of 

 industry languishing, in the midst of an idle, miserable, 

 and haggard population. Fifty years passed, and the 

 state of the Lowlands had become completely changed. 

 Eoads had been made, canals dug, coal-mines opened up, 

 iron works established ; manufactures were extending in. 

 all directions ; and Scotch agriculture, instead of being the 

 worst, was admitted to be the best in the island. 



" I have been perfectly astonished," wrote Romilly 

 from Stirling, in 1793, " at the richness and high cul- 

 tivation of all the tract of this calumniated country 

 through which I have passed, and which extends quite 

 from Edinburgh to the mountains where I now am. It 

 is true, however, that almost everything which one sees 

 to admire in the way of cultivation is due to modern 

 improvements ; and now and then one observes a few 

 acres of brown moss, contrasting admirably with the 

 corn-fields to which they are contiguous, and affording 

 a specimen of the dreariness and desolation which, only 

 half a century ago, overspread a country now highly 

 cultivated and become a most copious source of human 

 happiness." } 



It must, however, be admitted, that the industrial 

 progress to which we have above referred was confined 



1 Romilly 's * Autobiography.' 



