south-east coast there is the road from Dover to London. | The statute for amending of highways gave power to 2. From the south-west coast there is a road from the the jobbers, and the highways became worse. The extreme point of Cornwall to Exeter, by Launceston evil went on for another century, till at last came the and Okehampton, and thence to London by Shaftesbury turnpike system for its remedy. The first turnpike act and Salisbury. 3. There are two roads from Norfolk was passed in 1663 (15th Charles II.), and its preamand Suffolk to London-one from Walsingham, by ble shows what a state of road perfection we had reached, Newmarket, till it joins the north road near Royston; even after the establishment of the Post: "Whereas the the other from Yarmouth to Ipswich, Colchester, and ancient highway and post-road leading from London to Chelmsford. 4. From South Wales to London, there York, and so into Scotland, and likewise from London is a road from St. David's, by Caermarthen and Hay into Lincolnshire, lieth for many miles in the counties to Gloucester, and thence by Cirencester, Farringdon, of Hertford, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, in many of Abingdon, Henley, and Maidenhead; where it unites which places the road, by reason of the great and many with, 5, the road from London to Bristol, by Reading, loads which are weekly drawn in waggons through the Marlborough, and Chippenham. The northern roads said places, as well by reason of the great trade of barley constitute the longest and most important lines. They and malt that cometh to Ware, and so is conveyed by are, 6, the road from London to Cockermouth, by Saint water to the city of London, as other carriages, both from Alban's, Dunstable, Daventry, Coventry, Lichfield, the north parts, as also from the city of Norwich, Saint Stone, Warrington, Preston, Lancaster, Kendal, and Edmundsbury, and the town of Cambridge, to London, Keswick; 7, the road from London to Berwick, by is very ruinous, and become almost impassable, insomuch Ware, Huntingdon, Stamford, Grantham, Newark, that it is become very dangerous to all his Majesty's York, Darlington, Durham, Newcastle, Morpeth, Aln- liege people that pass that way." The "ancient highwick, and Belford; 8, the road from North Wales,- way and post-road leading from London to York, and from Caernarvon to Conway and Chester, and thence to so into Scotland," is on many accounts one of the most Newcastle-under-Lyne, where it joins the road from important lines of the country, and has been more London to Cockermouth. There are, in addition to travelled on than any other line. For this reason, prothese eight great lines, the road from London to Oxford, bably, there are more incidental descriptions of the by Uxbridge; and the road from London to Cambridge, mode of travel on this road, to be found in books, than by Saffron Walden. all which refer to other roads. From its great length, its passage through the border country, and its onward progress through what was another kingdom, the north road offers very striking contrasts between its ancient and its modern state. The contrasts will be still greater in a few short months, when this famous road will be, as it were, annihilated by the railway from London to Edinburgh. Let us see, then, what this north road will supply us of material for this our introductory paper on the communications of "The Land we live in," with occasional glances at other highways. The most cursory inspection of the map of England will shew the imperfect nature of our internal communication, when the lines we have recited were the only great thoroughfares. But it must also be borne in mind, that the manufacturing hives of English population were not yet formed. We are speaking of the time which preceded turnpikes by a century, canals by two centuries, and railways by three centuries. The transition from one state of things to the other involves some curious particulars. Cross-roads, as well as the great thoroughfares, were of course absolutely necessary for carrying on the business of life. Some were merely lanes over the natural soil,-some paved roads for pack-horses. Annual labour for the repair of roads was first imposed by the statute of the 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary, " for amending of highways, being now both very noisome and tedious to travel in, and dangerous to all passengers and carriages." Harrison says that the statute was constantly evaded by the covetousness of the rich and the laziness of the poor; that parish surveyors took care to have good roads to their own fields, but neglected those that led from market to market; and that encroachments were daily made upon the highways by covetous landowners, so "that whereas some streets within these five-and-twenty years have been in most places fifty feet broad, according to the law, whereby the traveller might either escape the thief, or shift the mire, or pass by the loaden cart, without danger to himself or his horse; now they are brought unto twelve, or twenty, or six-and-twenty at the most." Local jobbing, we thus see, is an hereditary accomplishment. Those who are not tolerably familiar with the Memoir Literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, will have some difficulty to comprehend how our ancestors moved about from place to place, and carried on the business of communication with distant inland parts. The mode of conveyance was so universal, and so established, that it rarely offers itself to any especial notice. Till the beginning of the eighteenth century we were almost wholly an EQUESTRIAN people. Harrison describes "the excellent paces" of our saddle-horses as peculiar to those of our soil; and says, that "our countrymen, seeking their ease in every corner where it is to be had, delight very much in this quality." From the days of the Wife of Bath, "girt with a pair of spurrés sharp," to the days of Queen Elizabeth, we have scarcely a trace of ladies accomplishing their peregrinations in any other manner than that which Chaucer has recorded: "Upon an ambler easily she sat." Luxury had its appliances ready for this almost exclusive mode of travel. "A lover of his country," who, in 1673, saw that coaches would be the ruin of the .... kingdom, says, "before these coaches were set up, travellers rode on horseback; and men had boots, spurs, saddles, bridles, saddle-cloths, and good riding suits. .... Most gentlemen, before they travelled in their coaches, used to ride with swords, belts, pistols, holsters, portmanteaus, and hat-cases; for when they rode on horseback they rode in one suit, and carried another to wear when they came to their journey's end, or lay by the way. . . . . And if they were women that travelled, they needed to have safeguards and hoods, sidesaddles, and pillions, with strappings, saddle or pillion cloths, which, for the most part, were either laced or embroidered." The saving of much of this expenditure, by travelling in coaches, the writer holds, is the ruin of trade. "For, formerly, every man that had occasion to travel many journeys yearly, or to ride up and down, kept horses for himself and his servants, and seldom rid without one or two men." In 1526, the Earl of Cumberland rode from Skipton to London, with thirty-three servants. (Whitaker's Craven.) In 1582, the Earl of Shrewsbury writes to a dependant: "I think my company will be twenty gentlemen and twenty yeomen, besides their men and my horsekeepers. I think to set forwards about the 11th of September, from Wingfield to Leicester, to my bed, and to make but four days' journey to London." (Lodge's Illustrations.) In 1640, the wife of the last Earl of Cumberland rode from London to Londesborough, having thirty-two horses in her train; and the journey occupied eleven days. These slow progresses were the relics of the old times of sumpter-horses, when princes and nobles travelled with vast cavalcades, like an oriental caravan. We must not imagine that all equestrian travelling was at this slow rate. James I. of England was indeed nearly five weeks on his padded saddle, in his royal progress from Edinburgh to London; but Sir Robert Carey, determining to be the first to tell James that he was king of England, stole out of Richmond Palace, at three o'clock of the morning of Thursday, the 24th of March, and reached Edinburgh on the night of Saturday, the 26th, the king having gone to bed by the time he had knocked at the gate. This ride of four hundred miles in seventy hours, gives one an elevated notion of the travelling accommodations of two centuries and a half ago. But it must be borne in mind that such instances were the exceptions to the rule of slow travelling. Although the Post was not established by law, there were post-masters, at the end of the sixteenth century, on all the great lines of roads; and, for a sufficient consideration, they would furnish such a traveller as Sir Robert Carey with abundant horses, that he might ride till they dropped,-as, indeed, he records one of his horses to have done. Then, again, although the roads were bad, the equestrian had many a mile of the smooth turf of an unenclosed country to gallop over. Let it not be forgotten, that if Sir Robert Carey rode from London to Edinburgh at the rate of six miles an hour, keeping on night and day, with relays of horses, the general communication of the country was so slow, that although Elizabeth died at 66 two o'clock of the morning of Thursday, the 24th of March, and James was proclaimed king, at London, on the same morning, yet the news of it reached not the city of York, until Sunday, March the 27th." (Continuation of Stow's Annals.) 66 The days before the Post were days when those who left their houses, for distant parts of England, were more separated from their friends than the North American emigrant of our own times. The transmission of intelligence across the Atlantic is now an easier thing than the old conveyance of a letter two hundred miles, upon a cross road. The historian of Craven, speaking of 1609, says, "at this time the communication between the north of England and the universities was kept up by carriers, who pursued their tedious but uniform route with whole trains of packhorses. To their care were consigned not only the packages, but frequently the persons, of young scholars. It was through their medium, also, that epistolary correspondence was managed; and as they always visited London, a letter could scarcely be exchanged between Yorkshire and Oxford in less time than a month." Charles I. seems, in 1635, to have resolved to remedy this evil, by the establishment of the home post-office. In his proclamation of that year he says, that there had been no certain intercourse between England and Scotland; and he therefore commands a running post to be established between London and Edinburgh, to go thither and come back again in six days; and for other roads there are promised the same advantages. In 1660 the General Post-office was established by act of parliament; and all letters were to be sent through this office, except such letters as shall be sent by coaches, common known carriers of goods by carts, waggons, and pack-horses, and shall be carried along with their carts, waggons, and packhorses respectively." The Post-master General and his deputies, under this statute, and no other person or persons, "shall provide and prepare horses and furniture to let to hire unto all thorough posts and persons riding in post, by commission or without, to and from all and every the places of England, Scotland, and Ireland, where any post-roads are." We find, by various clauses of this act, that the Post-master was also to furnish a guide with a horn to such as ride post, that he was to furnish horses within half an hour after demand,—and that if he could not accomplish this, persons might hire a horse where they could, and sue the Post-master for a penalty. The country Postmaster was an ancient functionary, who had long been in the habit of attending to the wants of those who bore letters inscribed "Haste, haste, post haste." He was generally an inn-keeper. Taylor, the water poet, in his "Penniless Pilgrimage" from London to Scotland, in 1618, has described one that might rival any Boniface on record: "From Stamford, the next day, we rode to Huntingdon, where we lodged at the postmaster's house, at the sign of the Crown; his name is Riggs. He was informed who I was, and wherefore I undertook this my penniless progress; wherefore he came up to our chamber, and supped with us, and very | while he is on the king's highway, and the bells go bountifully called for three quarts of wine and sugar, cheerily as he crosses some pleasant common. Perand four jugs of beer. He did drink and begin healths chance, as he ascends the wide moorlands, the clouds like a horse-leech, and swallowed down his cups without darken around him, the mist falls heavily, the carriers feeling, as if he had had the dropsy, or nine pound can see no track; but by an unerring instinct the of spunge in his maw. In a word, as he is a post, he cautiously stepping horses keep their file, and ask no drank post, striving and calling by all means to make better guide than the sound of their sagacious leader's the reckoning great, or to make us men of great reckon- bells. He will not lead them into boggy places; he ing. But in his payment he was tired like a jade, leaving will keep steady, even when man has ceased to direct the gentleman that was with me to discharge the terrible him. If the way is unusually rough, the old and feeble shot, or else one of my horses must have lain in pawn horses lag behind; but they never break the order of for his superfluous calling and unmannerly intrusion." their march, and they ultimately push on, even if they should die in their perseverance.* The inexperienced passenger must have needed some courage in these passages across the semi-deserts of uncultivated England. But soon he is in a lane some four feet wide,— sometimes floundering in the mud-at other times slipping upon a paved causeway, with a thick sludge on either side of the narrow track. In the hills of Derbyshire have we ridden the sure-footed pony of the country down these winding roads, shut out from the wide prospect around us by overhanging hedges—a privation which the pack-horse traveller little cared for. But not only in Derbyshire, in the days before men sought the picturesque, were such roads travelled over, but in the very thickest of our metropolitan Hagbush Lane, which was described by William Hone only twenty years ago, but which has now vanished, was the ancient bridle or pack-horse road from London to the North, and extended by the Holloway back road, as far as the City-road, near Old Street. "Some parts of Hagbush-lane," says Hone, " are much lower than the meadows on either The CARRIERS of England have always been a progressive body, in more than one sense of the word. They were amongst the first in our days to see what railways would accomplish for the transit of goods and passengers. They were the first, more than two centuries ago, to change the mode of passenger-conveyance from the riding-horse to the waggon. They brought the Oxford scholars, as we have seen, out of the North with their pack-horses. The most famous of all the old carriers was he of Cambridge, of whom Milton wrote, "Here lies old Hobson; Death hath broke his girt, He it was that gave rise to the saying of "Hobson's horses to take the one that stood next the stable-door. suburb. side." At one time a terraced ridge, at another a deep days that the innovation of waggons came in, in which passengers were carried from city to city. But long did the passenger-waggon and the pack-horse continuerut, the pack-horse road must have been to the unacto travel in good fellowship. Roderick Random tried both conveyances: "There is no such convenience as a waggon in this country (Scotland), and my finances were too weak to support the expense of hiring a horse. I determined therefore to set out with the carriers, who transport goods from one place to another on horseback; and this scheme I accordingly put in execution on the 1st day of November, 1739, sitting upon a packsaddle between two baskets, one of which contained my goods in a knapsack. But by the time we arrived at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I was so fatigued with the tediousness of the carriage, and benumbed with the coldness of the weather, that I resolved to travel the rest of my journey on foot, rather than proceed in such a disagreeable manner." We of this age complain that the penny-a-mile passengers in covered railway carriages, which only go ten miles an hour, are somewhat hardly used. Let us contrast this case with that of the pack-horse traveller. Seated in the throne which Roderick Random occupied, he sallied forth at "four by the day," when the horses were "packed;" forgetting, for a little while, the uneasiness of his seat, by the remembrance how he had been " stung like a tench." He is stuck in the midst of a file of fifty horses, a large companionship for safety. For a little customed traveller a somewhat perilous pass. Happy would he be when the house which promised "good entertainment for man and horse," and which, in the early days of English art, hung out a representation. of the animal he bestrode, which might be mistaken for a dromedary, - happy would he be when the "watering-time" arrived. Well-earned would be the rest. Again would the cavalcade be in movement, "till dewy eve,"-again would come the rasher and eggs for supper, with the black jack of home-brewed ale; again the sound sleep, in spite of night plagues; and again the early morning journey. A fortnight between York and London would be a quick passage. Well, there might be worse arrangements for a contemplative traveller; but for ourselves, being some what fearless of innovations, we must avow a preference for the Express-train. (Cut, 1.) Our antiquarian annalist, Stow, records that, in 1605, LONG WAGGONS for passengers and commodities tra velled to London from Canterbury and other large towns. According to this authority, they were known as early as 1564. "The lover of his country," whom we have already quoted, has no violent objection to pack-horse, thus exerting himself to maintain his place, dropping down dead See, in Bewick's "History of Quadrupeds," an interesting anecdote of a when he reached the inn-yard. these "long waggon coaches," as he calls them. They Let not the "long stage waggon," which thus kept alive a monthly communication between Yorkshire and London, and carried, according to Smollett, no less dignified persons than a medical student, an ensign in a marching regiment, and a city money-lender, be confounded with the broad-wheeled waggon that, after being half drowned by the waters of the canal, has now been swept from the surface of the earth by the fire of the railroad. Have we not ourselves heard the merry bells of the team, breasting their way right in the centre of the broad Bath road, unyielding to coach or curricle? Have we not seen the bright eye glancing from the opening of the tilt behind, as the ponderous wain is moving beside the village green, and the stal wart driver tells the anxious maiden that it is only one more mile to the turnpike where she is to meet "the young man ?" Have we not sat beneath the branching elm which fronts some little inn where waggons congregate, and heard much goodly talk about the dearness of horses, and the craft of Lunnun? (Cut, 4.) They are gone these once familiar scenes; "They live no longer in the faith of reason;" but they will live for ever in such pictures as that our friend Creswick has painted of "The London Road a hundred years ago." We are arrived at the next phase of our travelling progress-the introduction of STAGE-COACHES, towards the end of the 17th century. But before we proceed to this subject, let us say a few words upon the roads of that time. The turnpike upon the great Northern road does not appear to have done much for its reparation. In the "Diary of Ralph Thoresby," under the date of October, 1580, we find this entry: "To Ware, twenty miles from London, a most pleasant road in summer, and as bad in winter, because of the depth of the cart-ruts, though far off as bad [far less bad] as thence to Buntingford and Puckeridge, and part of the way to Royston." Fifteen years later we have a still more gloomy account of the state of the same road in this Diary: "Rode by Puckeridge to Ware, where we baited, and had some showers, which raised the washes upon the road to that height that passengers that were upon the road swam, and a poor higgler was drowned ..... I have the greatest cause of thankfulness for the goodness of my heavenly Protector, that, being exposed to greater dangers by my horse's boggling at every coach, and waggon we met, I received no damage, though the ways were very bad, the ruts deep, and the roads extremely full of water; which rendered my circumstances (often meeting the loaded waggons in very inconvenient places) not only melancholy, but really very dangerous." This state of things was as late in the season as the 19th of May. We cannot be surprised that poor Ralph Thoresby, with the feeling of these perils, caused public prayers to be offered up for one going a journey, previous to leaving home on another occasion. The frightful condition of the principal road out of London, after the passing of the Turnpike Act for its amendment which Act imposed a toll pretty heavy, for those days, upon "horses, carts, coaches, waggons, droves and gangs of cattle," may have arisen from the laxity with which the toll was collected. It is said that the toll was so unpopular, that "the mob" broke the toll-gates. We do not exactly see what "the mob," in the usual sense of the term, had to do with the matter. But we can picture to ourselves a series of contests between the toll-keepers and a stout body of drovers, swineherds, carriers, and waggoners, that in those days of insufficient police must have produced many a forcible evasion of the law. It is not difficult also to believe that the first introduction of the system would be offensive to the richer dwellers "Now turn again, turn again, said the Pinder, For you have forsaken the King's highway, In the middle of the seventeenth century, when in the country, who in the pursuit of their field-sports | but in 1692 it was again found necessary to give two were not very considerate as to the effect of trespass, days to the journey, from Michaelmas to Lady-day. and were not much accustomed to have their wills "The lover of his country," however, has furnished thwarted by authority of any sort. The old ballad us the most complete picture of coach travelling, in of the Pinder of Wakefield shows a stout fellow with a 1673. The long journeys were from London to quarter-staff, ready to break the heads of encroachers Exeter, Chester, or York. On these roads the fare upon private property: was forty shillings in summer, and forty-five shillings in winter, each way. The coachman was changed four times, and a passenger was expected to give each coachman a shilling at the end of the stage, besides a total of three shillings for drink to the coachmen, at their halting-places. In summer, the time occupied. in riding was four days,-in winter, six days. But these were long days. The complaining writer says, "what advantage is it to men's health to be called out of their beds into these coaches, an hour before day in the morning, to be hurried in them from place to place, till one hour, two, or three, within night; insomuch that, after sitting all day, in the summer time stifled with heat and choked with dust,-or in the winter time starving and freezing with eold or choked with filthy fogs, they are often brought into their inns by torch-light, when it is too late to sit up to get a supper; and next morning they are forced into the coach so early that they can get no breakfast." Added to these troubles the fault-finder alleges the grievances of crying children, and crowds of boxes and bundles. He gives us some notion of the roads and the safety of the carriages: "Is it for a man's health to travel with tired jades, to be laid fast in the foul ways, and forced to wade up to the knees in mire; afterwards sit in the cold till teams of horses can be sent to pull the coach out? Is it for their health to travel in rotten coaches, and to have their tackle, or perch, or axletree broken, and then to wait three or four hours, sometimes half a day, to have them mended, and then to travel all night to make good their stage?" This is a queer state of things, a little exaggerated perhaps, but in the main true. It is remarkable how long the roads and the coaches continued to be execrable. "My coin is spent, my time is lost." We have abundant evidence that stage-coaches were in use soon after the middle of the seventeenth century. In 1663, Mr. Edward Parker, writing to his father, who lived near Preston, says, "I got to London on Saturday last. My journey was noways pleasant, being forced to ride in the boot all the way. The company that came up with me were persons of great quality, as knights and ladies. My journey's expense was thirty shillings. This travel hath so indisposed me, that I am resolved never to ride up again in the coach." (Archæologia, vol. xx.) Let us turn aside, for a moment, to explain what "the boot" was. There were two boots to these old coaches-uncovered projections from each side of the carriage. Taylor, the Water Poet, thus describes them: "It [the coach] wears two boots, and no spurs, sometimes having two pair of legs in one boot; and oftentimes, against nature, most preposterously, it makes fair ladies wear the boot. Moreover, it makes people imitate sea-crabs, in being drawn sideways, as they are when they sit in the boot of the coach." In this boot, then, travelled unhappy Edward Parker. He does not tell us the rate at which he travelled. We will supply that information from other sources. From the Diary of Sir William Dugdale, it appears that in 1659 he set forward to London in the Coventry coach, on the 2nd of May, and arrived on the 4th of May three days. The Diary of a Yorkshire clergyman (quoted in Archæologia, vol. xx.) shows that in the winter of 1682, a journey from Nottingham to London in a stage-coach occupied four whole days. In Antony à Wood's Diary we are told, that in 1667 he travelled from Oxford to London in the coach, and was two days in accomplishing the passage. A few years after, the feat was performed in thirteen hours; noon. The Express train of the Great Western Railway goes to Exeter, a hundred and ninety-three miles, in four hours and a half. In 1725 the stage-coach journey from London to Exeter occupied four summer days. The passengers were aroused every morning at two o'clock, left their inn at three, dined at ten o'clock, and finished their day's labour at three in the afterIn 1739 Mr. (Mrs. Manley's Journey.) Andrew Thompson, of Glasgow, with a friend, left Glasgow to ride to London. There was no turnpikeroad till they came to Grantham, within a hundred and ten miles of the metropolis. Up to that point they travelled on a narrow causeway, with an unmade soft road on each side. As strings of pack-horses met them, from time to time, they were obliged to plunge into the side road, and had often difficulty in scrambling again upon the causeway. (Cleland's Glasgow.) As late as 1763 there was only a coach once a month from Edinburgh to London, which was twelve or four |