travel above thirty miles a day in the summer, and twenty-five in the winter, and to shift inns every journey, that so trade might be diffused;" while accommodation would thus be furnished for "the sick and lame, that they pretend cannot travel on horseback." Even these, however, should be suppressed within fifty miles of London, where he affirmed that "they were no way necessary." The state of the roads in the south of England in 1703 must have been far worse than the imagination can now readily depict. In a journey which was undertaken from Portsmouth to the Duke of Somerset's, at Petworth, in Sussex, fourteen hours were occupied. An attendant thus speaks of the pilgrimage :- "We set out at six o'clock in the morning to go to Petworth, and did not get out of the coaches, save only when we were overturned and stuck fast in the mire, till we arrived at our journey's end. 'Twas hard service for the prince to sit fourteen hours in the coach that day, without eating anything, and passing through the worst ways that I ever saw in my life. We were thrown but once indeed in going; but both our coach, which was leading, and His Highness's body-coach, would have suffered very often, if the nimble boors of Sussex had not frequently poised it, or supported it with their shoulders, from Godalming almost to Petworth; and the nearer we approached the duke's the more inaccessible it seemed to be. The last nine miles of the way cost six hours time to conquer." In the life-time of the "proud Duke of Somerset," who died about the middle of the eighteenth century, the roads in Sussex were so bad, that, in order to arrive at Guildford from Petworth, it was necessary for travellers to make for the nearest point of the great road for Portsmouth to London; and the journey was a work of so much difficulty as to occupy the whole day. The distance between Petworth and London is less than fifty miles; and yet the duke had a house at Guildford which was regularly occupied as a resting-place for the night by any part of his family travelling to the metropolis.* And this was little more than a hundred years ago! The way in which travelling was carried on in 1740 is illustrated by Pennant. In March, he tells us, he changed his Welsh school for one nearer to the capital, and travelled in the Chester stage. The first day, with much difficulty, he reached Whitchurch, a distance of twenty miles from Chester; the second day he arrived at the Welsh Harp; the third, at Coventry; the fourth, at Northampton; the fifth, at Dunstable; and, by special effort and perseverance, they reached London before the commencement of the next night. "The * Archæologia. + Journey from Chester to London. strain and labour of six good horses, sometimes eight, drew us," he says, "through the sloughs of Mireden, and many other places. We were frequently out two hours before day, and as late at night, and in the depth of winter proportionably later. Families who travelled in their own carriages contracted with Benson and Co., and were dragged up in the same number of days by three sets of able horses. The single gentlemen, then a hardy race, equipped in jack-boots and trowsers up to their middle, rode post through thick and thin; and, guarded against the mire, defied the frequent stumble and fall, arose and pursued their journey with alacrity,—while in these days their enervated posterity sleep away their rapid journeys in easy chaises, fitted for the conveyance of the soft inhabitants of Sybaris." A hundred years ago there was no regular stage-coach from London to Edinburgh; and the Scottish newspapers occasionally contained advertisements, stating, that an individual about to proceed to the metropolis by a post-chaise, would be glad to hear of a fellow-adventurer or two; that, by mutual assistance, the expense might be diminished to each. Before 1754, however, a stage-coach was established on the route between the two British capitals; and, in the Edinburgh Courant for that year, it was advertized, that "The Edinburgh stage-coach, for the better accommodation of passengers, will be altered to a new genteel two-end glass coach-machine, hung on steel springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer and twelve in winter; to set out the first Tuesday in March, and continue it, from Hosea Eastgate's, the Coach and Horses, in Dean-street, Soho, London; and from John Somerville's, in the Canongate, Edinburgh, every other Tuesday, and meet at Burrowbridge on Saturday night, and set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Friday. In winter, to set out from London to Edinburgh every other (alternate) Monday morning, and to go to Burrowbridge on Saturday night; and to set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Saturday night. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed, if God permits, by your dutiful servant HOSEA EASTGATE." Arthur Young, who travelled in Lancashire about the year 1770, has left us a forcible and graphic, if not elegant sketch of the state of the roads and of the means of communication. I know not," he says, “in the whole range of language, terms sufficiently expressive to describe this infernal road. Let me most seriously caution all travellers who may accidentally propose to travel this terrible country, to avoid it as they would the devil; for a thousand to one they break their necks or their limbs by overthrows or breakings down. They will here meet with ruts, which I actually measured, four feet deep, and floating with mud, only from a wet summer; what, therefore, must it be after a winter? The only mending it receives, is tumbling in some loose stones, which serves no other purpose than jolting a carriage in the most intolerable manner. These are not merely opinions, but facts; for I actually passed three carts broken down in these eighteen miles of execrable memory." Subsequently, in speaking of a turnpike road near Warrington, he says, "This a paved road, most infamously bad. Any person would imagine the people of the country had made it with a view to immediate destruction! for the breadth is only sufficient for one carriage; consequently, it is cut at once into ruts; and you may easily conceive what a break-down, dislocating road, with ruts cut through a pavement, must be." Such was the style of travelling in Britain less than a century ago, from the time we write. Truly may we say, "tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis." As illustrative of the speed at which locomotion was performed in 1766, Lord Eldon mentions, that, when he left school in that year to go to Oxford, he came up from Newcastle to London in a coach, which was called "a fly," on account of its quick travelling, as it was then thought; but he was three or four days and nights upon the road. There was no such velocity as to endanger overturning or other mischief; as a sort of apology for which there was printed on the panel of the carriage the phrase "Sat cito, si sat bene." The effect of this sentence upon the mind of the embryo chancellor was heightened by a circumstance which occurred upon the journey. A quaker, who was a fellow-traveller, stopped the coach at the inn at Tuxford, desired the chamber-maid to come to the coach-door, and gave her sixpence, telling her, that he forgot to give it her when he slept there two years before. Young Scott, who was not characterized by too great bashfulness of manner, said to him, "Friend, have you seen the motto on this coach ?" "No!" "Then look at it; for I think, giving her only sixpence now is neither sat cito nor sat bene.” Despite the opposition which improvements excited, and we suppose always will excite, facilities of communication throughout the country gradually and steadily increased. The money expended in travelling, was at length sufficient to allow a more regular repair of the roads, and lighter vehicles were substituted for the cumbrous machines that had been employed. The breed of horses, too, was greatly improved; and, at length, England surpassed all other countries in the excellence of its roads, the comfort of its conveyances, and the blood, strength, and speed of its "cattle." Many are there, who still talk of the delights of travelling in "the coaching days of old." They like to recall to mind the memories of the pleasant summer days they spent on the box-seat, chatting with the burly coachman; who, well protected against the possibilities of the weather by innumerable coats, knew every man and every horse he met, and could tell all the news of the country round. They describe, in glowing terms, the manner in which the mail was taken each morning or evening in the year to the authorised inspector, who examined every inch from the pole to the hind boot, and who critically probed and tested the wheels, axles, linch-pins, springs, and glasses;—how scrupulously every part was cleaned, and how every horse was groomed with as much precision as if he belonged to the stud of a nobleman. We, perhaps, smile at their enthusiasm, but admit that there is much reason for it, when the scenes thus delineated are connected with many a pleasing association. At eight o'clock, P.M., the coach was in all the " pride and panoply" of authority, with its mettled steeds "on parade" in Lombard-street, waiting to receive its bags; or, perhaps, it was one of those special occasions in which all ordinary circumstances were surpassed. The tidings of a victory had been received,—a national foe had been defeated,—and the mail was about to convey the intelligence to a thousand homes. Instead of the news being quietly spread over the length and breadth of the land in a few seconds, as in our own day, resort was had to more ordinary means. Horses, men, and carriages were accordingly dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves and ribbons. Coachmen and guards displayed the royal livery to the best advantage around their rotund forms; passengers merged the reserve of their individuality in a stronger feeling of national exultation; and when the loud noise of the lids locked down on the mail-bags smote on the ear, the trampling of fiery steeds was heard as they bounded off like leopards, amidst the thundering of wheels, and the boisterous shouts of assembled hosts of observers. In the vivid remembrance of such scenes, it is scarcely surprising that some should regret that they have passed away for ever,—that tidings must now be transmitted by steam, or electric telegraph, and that the voice of the trumpet that once announced from afar the approach of the laurelled mail, should be lost amid the hisses or shrieks of the locomotive. We can almost join with them when they sing : "We miss the cantering team, the winding way, The road-side halt, the post-horn's well known air, The inns, the gaping towns, and all the landscape fair." Now and then, indeed, we may meet with "a relic" who utterly |