near; Anon you hear the village carrier's bell; Then does his grey, old tilted cart appear, Moving so slow, you think he never will get there." "SUMMER MORNING." BUT few have travelled far through England without being struck by the solitary situation of some of the toll-gates which they have passed through; and what must their loneliness be now, when the coaches have been taken off the roads? For we fancy that the sound of the horn, and the thundering of the guard at the gate, in the deep midnight, were often, in those dreary places, welcome company. But in the silent, out-of-the-way country, where three or four long, houseless, weary, lanelike roads, come through woods and between hills, and meet at some murderous-looking angle, that is the spot for a romantic and lonely toll-gate. If you peep in at the open door, you see a loaded gun and a brace of pistols hanging over the mantel-piece, and a savage dog stands staring at you on the threshold; for there is a look of danger, both within and without the place. If a suspicious character calls in the day-time, to light his pipe or inquire the way, the light is brought to the door, and the answer given through as small an opening as can possibly be made; for the toll-keeper has a dislike to all reconnoitring, If you look at the windows, they are barred like a prison; the door is also covered with sheet-iron, and it would be a difficult matter to storm such a stronghold. You see nothing around for miles, but moors and commons, woods and fields; and you think of the long nights in the middle of winter, when sixteen hours of darkness out of the twenty-four, hang over that lonely and silent scene. You recall the winds which blow all night long, and the awful roaring of the tall trees, mingled with heavy showers of rain, that come blinding and beating upon the window-panes, and sounding like robbers that are breaking through; and you feel that you could never sleep amid such "a warring of the elements." Perhaps near at hand there stands a gibbet-post, on the very spot where a murder was committed; and the gibbetirons swing, and creak, and rattle, as the wind goes whistling through them; and you feel as if you would not live near such a place for a thousand a-year. Or it may be that some one who destroyed himself is buried beneath the guide-post at the corner of the cross roads, as it was the custom to inter suicides in such like places a few years ago; and all the country people, for miles round, believe that the spot is haunted, for at twelve o'clock at night, nobody knows what has not been seen. Drunken farmers, on horseback, have been chased, and timid ploughboys have had to run for it; and the old toll-man has had to come out to one fainting, and another speechless, and a third with his hair standing on end; and if you believe but half, there never was such a spot where "bogies" laid wait, and "caught you unawares." It is a solitary life to keep watch at these dreary toll-gates day after day, and night after night; places where the traffic is so small, that the tolls taken scarcely pay for keeping the roads in the neighbourhood in repair. True, there is a small patch of garden ground to cultivate; but, then, how few pause to admire it! A horseman pulls up, pays his penny, and the old man, merely because it is a change, watches him until he is out of sight; then for hours he hears not the sound of a human voice, for no one comes that way but what has to journey miles further, for there is nowhere to go to, no place to stop at, but the market-town, ten miles off. Sometimes this solitary confinement is relieved by the appearance of the village constable and his deputy. A robbery has been committed, and they have traced foot-marks to the end of the lane; in the night he must have passed through the wicket (for foot passengers) of the toll-gate. Did he hear it slam to?-at what time? Was it one man only, or did he hear voices? Comfortable inquiries these for a lonely man, who may be called upon to give evidence at the next assizes, and if the prisoner escapes, there he is still to be found "at home" on any future occasion. But to drive up to one of these places in the night, as we have done, on some desolate country road, and knock for half anhour before we could awaken the toll-man; then, when he had answered you, to hear him "hack, hack," with his flint and steel, to be told that the tinder was damp,-that he could not find a match,-and perhaps, the rain coming down all the while in torrents; this is ruralising with a vengeance. Blow him up as hard as you like, he does not know how he came so "dead asleep; he fancied he heard somebody, but, then, everybody knocks who passes; and there's no knowing who's who, or what's what. He has got up so often, and there's been nobody there; or they've run away, especially on a market night or at a feast-time! "Poor old fellow! with you it is but once; you bid him keep the change, and are ashamed that you lost your temper, for you find he gets but about twenty pounds a-year, when he has "paid the trust." A toll-gate, beside a busy and lively road, is as cheerful a place as one can well wish for; the objects are constantly changing, like the forms and colours in the kaleidoscope. Up comes the huge broad-wheeled waggon with its six horses, and merry faces peeping out from the arch of the tilt. You wonder who the passengers are, and whither they are going; and the heavy vehicle keeps rumbling slowly along, as if it would reach the old city of York in about the same time that one of our Atlantic steamers would arrive at America. 'Tis gone! and you hear the tramp of horses, and the sound of the bugle; a troop of cavalry pass, two and two, the haughty steeds seeming to spurn the very earth on which they tread; you hear the measured jingle of their accoutrements all the way up the road. The im mense train of caravans comes rocking along, their high yellow sides seen far over the distant hedge- rows. You hear the roaring of the lion and the growling of the tiger, and are thankful that such customers come not on foot. They are followed by the minnows of the fair-peep-shows, and waxworks, and dwarfs, which you hope are very light indeed, for the sake of the poor jaded horse that has to draw them. The giant passes through on foot, and you pay nothing for a sight of him, while the wonderful fat boy stretches his legs for a mile or two; and you marvel what people can see so astonishing in either of them. Punch and Judy ride lovingly together in the same wooden box; and the dog Toby runs barking here and there, as if he were no better than a common eur. Kings, and queens, and princes, the savage bandit and the pale ghost, the truncheoned emperor and manacled slave, sit together on the top of the rickety stage, looking like common mortals, and drinking out of the same pewter pot whenever they halt, their regal dignity stowed away somewhere amid the lumber of the court, and their imposing grandeur bundled up ready for the next wash. Ventriloquists and conjurers, tumblers and balancers, singers and dancers, eaters of fire and swallowers of swords, men who turn bricks into guinea-pigs, and make you hear the chink of your own money in your throat, all pass along the great highway, and swell the tide of plunderers who have come to prey upon the neighbouring town. Then come the gipsies, with their children swinging and singing in the panniers, the youngest stowed away at its mother's back, and squalling lustily in the hood of her cloak. Inns and lodging-houses may be full to overflowing; what matter to them? the tents are ready to be erected at a moment's notice; the camp kettle plays a merry tune on the saucepan that swings beside it under the cart, and they go on jingling together from village to village. They cheat the toll-keeper, and laugh in his face; for whilst some dark-eyed sibyl is driving a bargain with him, the whole tribe have passed through, and he is glad to take what she offers. Away they go, laughing and chanting the old chorus: "Jog on, jog on, the footpath way, Your sad tires in a mile-a." SHAKSPEARE. And if there is a possibility of quitting the dusty high road, and breaking through the hedge, they will find a footpath way amongst the grass, and meet the cavalcade at some distant turning of the highway for, not to trespass, when half a mile of ground can be saved, is to throw away a risk, which a gipsy thinks well worth hazarding. What a current of human life rushes through that toll-gate at a fair time! How it would laugh to naught all the wisdom of our statistics, could we arrive at the real ways and means by which those hundreds live! How many amongst them have no home? What would all they possess in the world fetch, if sold? What numbers have not sufficient to pay for a lodging for the night! How many have journeyed thither, without object or aim, solely because it is a fair, and they have nowhere else in the world to go? They may, by chance, help to fix up a booth, run an errand, beg, steal, be trusted with sixpennyworth of articles (worth twopence) on commission, turn a swing, shout, or a showman, carry a board about the town whilst the fair lasts, pick up a few broken victuals in a tavern, or cost the county the expense of a month's imprisonment, then be turned loose amongst other "rogues and vagabonds," who must either starve, or do something to merit transportation. What matter? the law has done its duty for the present, and will not think of them again, unless they stir deeper in its memory. And yet, how difficult to legislate for such as these: imagine fifty such in an union workhouse,-it would be unroofed in one night; still these restless elements have at last an abiding place; they settle down somewhere, and make room for new comers. How? Where? What a history would it be to read, if these questions could be answered! How many would be found amongst our soldiers! What numbers leave their "country for their country's good!" How many die through slow starvation, and a want of the common comforts of life! What return would be gathered from those who perish in prisons! If we could but take a list of all who pass through that toll-gate the day before the fair, and trace their "whereabouts" twenty years after, with a brief diary of their "ups and downs" through life, we should have such a book as would throw all fiction into the shade, and drive romance into another world to search for new materials. But it cannot be; the grave holds more human secrets than will ever be known to the world! payment of the toll; and all the keeper would have got would have been a jest from Wamba, or a blow from Gurth the swine. herd. I remember, when very young, going with a butcher-boy, one Sunday in summer, to fetch a calf from a neighbouring village. There was a toll-gate on the road, at which we were to pay either a penny or threehalfpence, when we came back with our charge. To spend the money and avoid the gate, were two objects we were resolved to accomplish; so the money went first, as a proof that we were in earnest. There was a footpath over the fields and marshes, a much nearer road to the village than through the toll-gate, and along the common highway, and we consoled ourselves that where there was a road wide enough for us, there would be room enough for the calf; but then there were stiles, how was it to be got over these? Oh, we should find a gap somewhere in the hedge big enough to drive it through. Then there were those narrow planks across the dykes in the marshes; it would never walk across without falling in. Oh, we could lead it down the banks, and it would jump across-calves are very good jumpers; besides, we had spent the money, so it must be made to jump. We managed very well over the fields, and the calf trotted willingly enough along the soft, green grass; and, through breaking open a gate or two, and making a gap now and then in the hedges, which would cost Toll-gates, or bars, are very ancient. I the farmer two or three shillings to repair, remember mention is made of one some- we reached the first dyke without much where in Doomsday Book-that gloomy re- difficulty. The calf went down the bank, cord fraught with so much misery to the looked at the water, and refused to move; ancient Saxons. In the returns made by we used all our strength to force it across, the Commissioners sent out by William the but in vain. My companion had a rope in Norman, complaint is made of some gate- his pocket, so he made a kind of halter, keeper who kept two great dogs, and used which we fastened round the calf's head. to set them on the passengers who refused He jumped over the dyke-it was a good to pay toll, although the road had been made jump for a boy; if he pulled and I shoved, free by a charter from King Harold, to all go across it must. It was Sunday in sumwho cultivated lands within certain bound-mer, and in addition to a little blue jacket, aries of the neigbourhood. Many a struggle I had on white trousers and a white waistwas there, beyond doubt, between our Saxon ancestors and this burly gate-keeper. How many dogs he had killed, or how many battles he fought during the year, is not recorded; though, if we recollect rightly, he was aided by his two sons, while he himself wielded a tremendous cudgel. Rebecea and her daughters seem to have existed in those days; and we can imagine many a party riding by, too strong for this ancient gate-keeper, his dogs, his cudgel, and his Cedric of Rotherwood would, we fancy, have made a stand, and demurred at two sons. coat, all clean that very morning. What matter? I shoved like a young Sampson, the butcher-boy pulled, and over bounded the calf, when we least expected it, light as a bird. Into the dyke I went, head over ears, and, as the mud was about a foot deep at the bottom, I came out again with a good thick coat of it over me. Nor was this the worst of it; for as we were at no great distance from the toll-gate, the keeper had watched us behind the bank; and the first thing I saw, when the mud was rubbed out of my eyes, was the toll-man, with his hands on his sides, laughing fit to kill him- | self, and exclaiming, whenever he could get a word out between each merry peal, "Hang it, lad, you cleared the gate better than the dyke." I returned home with "a very ancient and fish-like smell." How beautifully situated are many of the toll-gates in the neighbourhood where this boyish adventure occurred, overlooking, as they do, miles of meadow-land, amid which the snug farm-houses nestle, with their crofts, and orchards, and gardens, and rick-yards! And ever along the road are little bits of moving pastoral life; a shepherd lad, driving his sheep to the next market to sell; a rosy-cheeked milk-maid, fetching up her cows, which every now and then pause to low through some gate, or bite off a tender shoot from the hedges; the farmer-man, sitting sideways on one of his horses, returning from his field-work, the whip resting upon his shoulder, and the measured music of the rattling harness joined with his own voice, as he trolls forth some rustic ditty about Before some of these toll-houses roses are tastefully trained, and a tree or two is planted, whose boughs meet above the roof, forming a most picturesque approach from the road, and causing us to half envy the occupier of such a sweet, rustic spot. Here, too, as with the old ferryman, almost everybody who passes is a neighbour, though they live four or five miles away. They greet each other by their Christian names: "It is a fine morning, John;" or "Good morning, William;" for, saving the 'squire, the parson, the doctor, or the lawyer, "Sir is but rarely used: should it be a very wealthy farmer, perhaps the compliment may be returned with a to Good morning, Mr. Langley," or whatever the surname may be. They inquire after each other's health, and the welfare of one another's families, in a manner which shows that they take an interest in their neighbours; very different to the common everyday courtesy with which we see hurrying business men salute each other in a busy citv. We have often been amused by watching the efforts that stray cattle make to pass through a toll-gate; they will linger about the spot for hours, and attempt to rush by time the gate is opened; and we have, every in many instances, seen them break through the hedges, make a circle round the fields, and come out again a long way above the bar. When once they have strayed from their pastures, they seem to have a great wish to go on straight a-head, and will sometimes traverse the whole length of the county. |