This is wholly a royal work. In Great Britain, all the water-works seem to have been private speculations, in which the hope of gain was the alluring cause except, indeed, the original undertaking of Hugh Myddleton, to introduce the New river into London. He certainly appears to have acted for the general good, and to have made great personal sacrifices for its promotion. In other instances, the commercial spirit, which looks to a reward for its investments, was at

the bottom of the enterprise.

The city of New York presents, it is believed, the only instance of a comparatively small community, not exceeding at the time 280,000 inhabitants, deliberately voting that an enterprise should be undertaken, in a style and on a scale greatly beyond their actual or any near future wants, but which, designed to endure for ages, would bear record to those ages, however distant, of a race of men who were content to incur present burdens, for the benefit of a posterity they could never know.

Having resolved on the work, they carried it forward with a degree of constancy and energy alike remarkable, so that in the space of five years, an aqueduct was completed, which, for the natural difficulties overcome, the substantial character of its structures, the very remarkable verification, in the results, of the previous calculations of the engineers as to the flow of the waters, and the quantity that could be delivered, for the extent of its

course, and the abundance of its supply, may be ranked among the foremost of like undertakings throughout the world. Nor were the extraordinary financial difficulties which affected the whole country, almost the whole world, during the greater portion of the period this enterprise was in