t for building the new London
Bridge, but it was awarded to the Rennies, under whose superintendence
it was built. The bridge is nine hundred and twenty-eight feet in
length, and has five arches. In this structure although utility was the
first consideration, there in an elegant solidity of design which makes
it pleasing and impressive in the highest degree. The rapid stream is as
little obstructed as the circumstances admitted, and there does not
appear to be in the bridge an atom of superfluous material. London
Bridge is, I suppose, the most crowded thoroughfare in the world.
Twenty-five thousand vehicles cross it daily, as well as countless
multitudes of foot-passengers. So great is the throng, that there is a
project now on foot to widen it. In 1831, when it was formally opened by
King William IV., the great engineer was knighted, and he was in
consequence ever after called Sir John Rennie.

During the period of railroad building, Sir John Rennie constructed a
great many remarkable works, particularly in Portugal and Sweden. We
have lately heard much of the disappointment of young engineers whom the
cessation in the construction of railroads has thrown out of business.
Perhaps no profession suffered more from the dull times than this. Sir
John Rennie explains the matter in his autobiography:--

"In 1844," he tells us, "the demand for engineering surveyors and
assistants was very great. Engineering was considered to be the only
profession where immense wealth and fame were to be acquired, and
consequently everybody became engineers. It was not the question whether
they were educated for it, or competent to undertake it, but simply
whether any person chose to dub himself engineer; hence lawyers' clerks,
surgeons' apprentices, merchants, tradesmen, officers in the army and
navy, private gentlemen, left their professions and became engineers.
The consequence was that innumerable blunders were made and vast sums of
money were recklessly expended."

It was much the same in the United States; and hence a good many of
these gentlemen have been obliged to find their way back to the homelier
occupations which they rashly abandoned. But in our modern world a
thoroughly trained engineer, like Sir John Rennie, will always be in
request; for man's conquest of the earth is still most incomplete; and I
do not doubt that the next century will far outdo this in the magnitude
of its engineering works, and in the external changes wro