equipped, took the road, and, changing his horse
at the usual stages, arrived at his destination in
about twelve hours. Pistols and a sword formed
a necessary part of his travelling dress, as they
did of that of every prudent man.

In these times the prudent man takes, instead,
an omnibus, a cab, or an underground railway,
to King's-cross. There he finds a small town
erected especially for his accommodation—a town
ruled by a government of which Mr. Pepys never
dreamed; a government whose officers are and
must be active men, and not dummies, the effect of
whose good or bad rule being immediately visible
and felt by the townspeople, or shareholders, they
seldom neglect their duties; a government in
which a shrewd person is justly valued, and not
sat upon by a titled oaf. In this model city a
modern traveller may provide himself with
anything, from a sandwich to a biographical
dictionary, and stepping into a comfortable carriage,
be pleasantly whirled, without fatigue, to
Huntingdon in precisely one hour and fifteen minutes,
and at a cost of eight shillings and ninepence
sterling.

I have been led into these reflections because
it is to Pepys's house we are now going on a
pleasant mission concerning horses and horse-
taming. In the same carriage are seated a
farmer, a clergyman, a tailor, a horse-dealer.
Let us hazily, lazily, mazily hear what they have
to say. It may do us good. The farmer is a
sound agricultural chemist. He knows all about
artificial manures. He is far from being bigoted
or obstinate. He says that the present prices
of wheat continue to pay the British farmer,
but he knows that future prices will not do
so, and that every acre of British land will
soon return to its natural and most profitable
state of pasture. Even now the best part of
farming seems to be weaning calves; nearly
thirty per cent to be realised on it, barring
mishaps. He says landlords do not like small
tenants. They like to put their ground into
farms of at least a thousand acres. He
knows that farming, to succeed well, ought to
be conducted, like all other business, on a
large scale, and with a large capital; and that
generally there is not enough capital applied
to farming. He is a keen-eyed, neatly dressed
man. He has no peculiarity, except a slight
tendency to use long " public " words; and
when mentioning his landlord, he speaks of him
as A. B. Fatlands, Esq., and not merely as Mr.
Fatlands. Otherwise, he might be a medical
man, or a lawyer, or a city tradesman. The
clergyman also is very different from the parson
of the old school who married the waiting-maid,
and left his patron's table as soon as pudding
was served. The refinement of this ecclesiastic
is rather oppressive until he warms; but then
he tells a goodish story of a friend of his who
was plucked at Cambridge, because he would
go fishing on an examination day. The tailor
keeps hunters and makes thousands and tens
of thousands yearly. He is going to sport
over the lands of a railway speculator ten
times richer than himself. What knew Mr.
Pepys of sporting tailors and railway Plutos?
And the horse-dealer, and the nobleman? The
first is a quiet, keen-looking gentleman,
remarkably clean and sedate in his appearance.
His business extends all over the world.
He is an experienced traveller, and an
accomplished linguist, who buys horses in
thousands to mount the cavalry of armies, and to
whom peace or war is a far more vital question
than to most professional diplomatists. Lastly,
the peer derives the best part of his income from
his share in a commercial firm. Mighty changes
these since the time of Mr. Pepys!

Although nearly all comfortable Englishmen
now live in the country, and London is fast
becoming little more than a gigantic workshop for
all trades and professions, few parts of the kingdom
are so little known as Huntingdonshire.
It seems to lie out of the way of smug tradesmen
and brisk lawyers; and land is still to be got
for sixty pounds an acre. Huntingdon is still, not
indeed the Huntingdon of Cromwell, but—not
to put too fine a point upon it—let us say the
Huntingdon of George the Third.

First in the objects of interest near it is
Hinchingbroke, the home of the old cavalier
family of Cromwell. It was here that the chief
of that loyal house, Sir Henry, called "the
Golden Knight," gave to Queen Elizabeth a very
gorgeous festivity, and his son, Sir Oliver,
treated douce King Jamie to the best dinner
he ever had in his life, when his majesty was
coming up to London to take possession of the
English crown. It is said to have been the
most magnificent entertainment ever presented
by a British subject to his sovereign. The result
of that great dinner may be, perhaps, still traced
in our history, for by this and similar
profusion the splendid gentleman so ruined
himself that his estate passed into the hands
of his lawyer, Sir Sydney Montague, ancestor
of the Earls of Sandwich. If Oliver Cromwell,
the nephew and godson, had not lost all hope
of inheriting so fair a domain, he might never
have become a malcontent and a rebel, and a
founder of British liberty.

The moderate sized family house of Hinchingbroke,
though partly burnt down, has been so
rebuilt in accordance with what was probably
its first plan, that it is one of the quaintest
of old English residences. It is full of peaked
windows which exclude the light, and of
passages leading nowhere, and low-browed
wainscoted rooms, looking out on gardens
which shut away small portions of air and
light from the use of the family; gardens
defended from wind by ivy-covered walls,
marvellously trim and pretty, but with no fair
view, no noble prospect of hill and valley.
Our ancestors had a strange passion for darkness.
They loved to sit and sing and drink in it
for hours. When angry, they shut themselves
up in the dark, and scolded through the door.
Here is a very fine portrait of Charles the
Second, probably an original, given by the
king to the first earl. It represents him as
handsomer than any of the other portraits—a