the very ages of barbarism, none ever equalled
that from Billericay to Tilbury. It is for near
twelve miles so narrow that a mouse cannot
pass by any carriage. I saw a fellow creep
under his waggon to assist me to lift, if
possible, my chaise over a hedge. To add to all
the infamous circumstances which occur to
plague a traveller, I must not forget the
eternally meeting with chalk waggons, themselves
frequently stuck fast, till a collection of them
are in the same situation, and twenty or thirty
horses may be tacked to each to draw them out,
one by one." In Essex, generally, he found the
roads full of ruts "of an incredible depth;" he
found the turnpike-road between Bury and Sudbury,
in Suffolk, as bad "as any unmended lane
in Wales;" full of ponds of liquid dirt, and
horse-laming flints. Between Titsworth and
Oxford he found the turnpike-road, as it was
called, abounding in loose stones, as large as a
man's head, and full of holes, and deep ruts;
from Gloucester to Newnham, a distance of
twelve miles, he found another "cursed road,"
"infamously stony, with ruts all the way;" and
from Newnham to Chepstow he describes the
road as a series of hills, like "the roofs of
houses joined."

Going to the north, a short time afterwards,
this unfortunate but observant traveller found
the roads no better in that quarter. Between
Richmond and Darlington they were "like to
dislocate his bones;" and when he has to speak
of the roads in Lancashire, he foams with rage.
He cautions us to avoid them as we would the
Evil One, for he measured ruts in them four feet
deep, that were full of floating mud.

The roads in the Midland Counties, and in
Kent, were no better. When Mr. Rennie, the
engineer, was engaged in surveying the Weald
with a view to the cutting of a canal through it
in 1802, he found the country almost destitute
of practicable roads.

In Northamptonshire, the only way of getting
along some of the main roads in rainy weather
was by swimming. Even now it is no uncommon
thing, as I can testify by personal observation,
to find miles of the railway from Blisworth
to Peterborough under water during the wet
season. All over the country inland light-
houses—land beacons—were humanely
stationed to keep benighted travellers out of
quagmires, ponds, and bogs. In Staffordshire, before
the great network of canals was made, the roads
were so bad, and so much like roads in every
other part of the kingdom, that the carriage of
earthenware in panniers was one shilling per
ton per mile, or eight shillings for a journey of
ten miles. This, too, was in the days of the
great artist-manufacturer—Wedgwood.

Modes of travelling changed with the gradual
improvement of the roads. The foot passengers
occasionally took to horse, while ladies rode on
pillions, or in horse-litters. Pack-horses gave
way to carriers' carts and waggons, and the
latter heavy rumbling vehicles, which did more
to wear out good roads than any monsters ever
framed by coach-builders, were largely
supplanted by stage-coaches about 1650. The
waggons crawled along, perhaps, at the rate of
ten miles in twelve hours, but the stage-coaches,
with much jolting, were able to reach four miles
an hour. The waggons were solid, slow, and
safe, while the coaches were high and unsafe,
and their drivers were drunken bullies. No
change in the mode of travelling was carried
out without a noisy agitation against it. Class
interests were as clamorous then as they are
now, and as desirous that their particular business
should be regarded as beyond
improvement.

The condition of the road to York in the last
century is never considered in the popular
account of Dick Turpin's half-legendary ride. He
is represented mounted on a fiery blood mare,
leaping over carts and toll-bars, and flying along
a hard, smooth ground granite road, like a
jockey at Epsom. This is the fancy picture,
and it is almost a pity to disturb it. The York
road in most places was like those which made
Arthur Young so savage; and bold Turpin's
pace may have been a broken amble of four
miles an hour.

In 1754 the first "flying coach" was
established by a knot of Manchester men to run
between that town and London. Their notion
of "flying" was to do the journey in four days
and a half, and yet this moderate speed was
looked upon with distrust. Lord Campbell tells
us that he was warned not to travel by Palmer's
improved mail-coaches, the first vehicles that
ventured upon eight miles an hour, towards the
close of the last century. He was told of
certain passengers who had come through by these
coaches from Edinburgh to London, and had
died of apoplexy from the rapidity of the motion.
This eight miles an hour was afterwards
increased to ten or twelve, with the improvement
in the leading lines of road; and at the latter
point the rate of fast travelling stopped, until
the best road of all was made—the railroad.

The railway reports, just issued by the Board
of Trade, give us a full statistical account of
what our railroads now are. The miles opened
in 1860 for regular traffic in the United Kingdom
were nearly ten thousand five hundred. The
travellers during the same year, also in the
United Kingdom, were one hundred and sixty-
three millions and a half, besides nearly fifty
thousand holders of season tickets, who probably
made many journeys. Altogether there must
have been nearly six journeys in the year for
each member of our population. The trains of
all kinds travelled more than one hundred and
two millions of miles, or more than four thousand
times round the world. Three hundred
and fifty-seven thousand and more dogs, and
over a quarter of a million of horses, made railway
journeys during the same period. The
goods traffic represented the carriage of over
twelve millions of cattle, sheep, and pigs, and
nearly ninety millions of tons of minerals and
general merchandise. The receipts of our
railways, from all kinds of traffic, were nearly
twenty-eight millions sterling (equal to the