Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/123

Rh the authorship of Dr. Love has been limited, compared with his well-known talents, and the wishes of his many admirers. During his own lifetime, indeed, he published nothing, as far as is known, except his "Addresses to the People of Otaheite," and a few sermons. After his death, however, a careful research among his papers enabled his friends to give the following posthumous works to the world deprived, however, of that careful correctness which his own revising pen would undoubtedly have bestowed on them:

1. A reprint of sermons preached by him on various public occasions; including also his Otaheitean addresses. This volume was republished soon after Dr. Love's death.

2. Two volumes of sermons and lectures, from his unrevised manuscripts. These were published in 1829.

3. In 1838 was published a volume containing about three hundred of his letters.

4. In 1853, a volume containing thirty-four sermons, which he preached in the West Church, Greenock, during the years 1784-6.

MACADAM, .—Since the days of the Appian and Flaminian highways, it has been unusual to convert a great public road into a memorial of its founder, by investing it with his name. Cities have been linked together, impassable highways penetrated, and kingdoms themselves converted into thoroughfares, while few have thought of inquiring by whom these facilities were planned, or constructed, or even kept in repair. Was it that, after these matchless road-makers, the Romans, had passed away, they left no successors worth commemorating? This, and the fact that even our best highways were the work not of individuals but communities, not of years but centuries, will explain the universal ignorance. Thus Europe went on for two thousand years, until a startling change occurred. Roads were now macadamized, because a new way of constructing them had been adopted; and that new way had been discovered by John Loudon Macadam.

This distinguished father of modern highways was born in the town of Ayr. The precise date of his birth we are unable to assign, but it appears to have been in the year 1756. He was the second son of James Macadam, Esq., of Waterhead, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright. This family, originally descended from the Macgregors, while the clan was still powerful and unproscribed, held the rank of Scottish barons at Waterhead previous to the accession of James VI. to the English throne; and the name passed into that of Macadam, in compliment to the first baron, whose name was Adam Macgregor. The last of these barons was James Macadam, father of the subject of this memoir, whose ill luck or profuse expenditure occasioned the family estate to pass by purchase into the possession of a younger branch of the original family. The maternal descent of John Loudon Macadam was still more distinguished, as his mother, Miss Cochrane of Waterside, on the banks of the Ayr, was related to the illustrious house of Dundonald. His earliest education was received at the school of Maybole, at that time taught by Mr. Doick; and even already it appears that the planning and construction of roads had attracted his attention.