Ossian Collection > Journal of a tour in Scotland in

xii INTRODUCTION
Southey. Motor traction has even restored
their vitality ; and to-day it is the railway
companies which have reason to look with
concern at the motor - car racing along
Telford's road to Glasgow, and the builders
of the tubular bridges who have occasion to
fear the competition of his beautiful flying arch.
II
The two men who thus became fellow-
travellers ran little risk, then, of those pro-
fessional jealousies which sometimes mar the
intercourse of colleagues in the same walk of
life. On the contrary, they were rather well
provided with the opportunity of testing the
truth of the maxim that unlike experience is
the surest foundation of friendship. For the
divergences ran deeper than mere difference
of avocation. Southey, educated at West-
minster and Balliol, had been fired by the
Revolution, had dreamed of a colony on the
Susquehanna where all men should be equal,
and written a tragedy on Robespierre ; but
presently, postponing revolutionary schemes
sine die, had settled comfortably at Greta Hall,
near Keswick, where he looked out across his
lawn at the glorious scenery of Derwentwater;
spending his days among his books, reading and