privilege of returning two members to parliament,
who purchased the votes of their
constituents, and the place had no other trade. On
went the tourist, with this one more difficulty
in his way of travelling, that at every stage the
chaise was changed, and, of course, there was
the inconvenience of removing all the baggage.

The country was still dreary and desolate,
most of its inhabitants living down the mines.
"I never see the greater part of my
parishioners," said a clergyman here, "till they
come up to be buried."

They met one of the old stage waggons which
achieved in their own fashion what is now the
goods traffic upon our railway lines. The Don
describes it as a huge carriage upon four wheels
of prodigious breadth—a breadth regulated by
law, on account of the roads—very wide, very
long, arched over with cloth, like a bower, and
drawn by eight large horses, whose neck-bells
were heard afar off, as they approached. These
machines, day and night upon their way, were
called flying waggons, although slower than
even a travelling funeral. England, again, was
no paradise for the post-horses, who
represented the express trains of their day. Waiting
for a change at Honiton, says Southey, in
his character of Espriella, at length a chaise
arrived, and the horses, instead of being suffered
to rest, weary as they were (for they had just
returned from Exeter), were immediately put to
for another journey. One of them had been
rubbed raw by the harness. At every stroke
of the whip Don Manuel's conscience upbraided
him, and the driver was not sparing of it. The
life of a post-horse, he adds, is truly wretched.
There will be cruel individuals in all countries;
but cruelty here is a matter of calculation. The
postmasters find it more profitable to overwork
their beasts, and kill them by hard labour in
two or three years, than to let them do half the
work, and live out their natural length of life.
The old stage-coach—not the lighter mail coach,
which, in time, supplied the stages with
improvement of their pattern—was, at the beginning
of this century, shaped like a trunk with
a rounded lid placed topsy turvy. The
passengers sat sideways; it carried sixteen inside,
and as many on the roof as could find room.
Yet, says Espriella Southey, this unmerciful
weight, with the proportionate luggage of each
person, is dragged by four horses, at the rate
of a league and a half within the hour; and
he admired the skill with which the driver
guided them with long reins, and directed those
huge machines round the corners of the streets,
which they always turned at full speed, and
through the sharp turns of the inn gateways.
Accidents, nevertheless, often happened, and
Southey makes his Spaniard urge against the
speed of the stage-coach, besides its cruelty,
the objection, since urged against railway
travelling, that, "considering how little time
this rapidity allows for observing the country,
I prefer the slow and safe movements of the
calessa."

The road through Doncaster suggested memories
of Gilbert Wakefield, a famous scholar, who
had lately been imprisoned there for opposition
to the Government, but had been released a year
before Espriella's visit, and had died of fever
six months after his release. The Bishop of
Llandaff in supporting the proposal of the
Government for a ten per cent income tax, had
said that it was not enough. The Government
should take a tenth of every man's property.
If every person were affected in the same
proportion, all would remain relatively as before,
and, in fact, no person be affected at all. "For
if," argued the bishop, "the foundation of a
great building were to sink equally in every
part at the same time, the whole pile, instead
of suffering any injury, would become firmer."
"True," said Wakefield, in his reply, "and
you, my lord bishop, who dwell in the upper
apartments, might still enjoy the prospect from
your windows; but what would become of me
and the good people who live upon the ground
floor?" One of the most learned and upright
scholars of the day was sentenced to two
years' imprisonment—a sentence which proved
sentence of death—because in the course of
this reply to the bishop he had found a parallel
for the state of the country in the fable of the
Ass and his Panniers. So much for freedom
of discussion when this nineteenth century
began!

Housed with his friend in London, Espriella
found that it wanted time and habit to acquire
the art of sleeping. To begin with, he was
roused every half hour to hear a report on the
state of the weather. For the first three hours
the watchman told him that it was a moonlight
night, then it became cloudy, and at half-past
three o'clock was rainy, so that he was as
well acquainted with every variation of the
atmosphere as if he had been looking from
the window all night long. A strange custom,
he thought it of the Londoners, to pay men for
bawling to them what the weather was, every
hour during the night, till they got so
accustomed to the noise, that they slept on and
could not hear what was said! The clatter of
the night coaches had scarcely ceased before
that of the morning carts began. The dustman
with his bell, and his chaunt of Dust oh!
succeeded to the watchman, then the boy who
collected porter pots, then Milk below! and
so on, with an innumerable succession of cries,
each in a different tune; but all in the way of
trade, and the Don utters no hint of a barrel
organ. A walk in the streets by day showed
differences between 1802 and 1868 rather in
the detail than in the character of the street
scenery. Two rival blacking makers were
standing in one of the streets, each carried a
boot, completely varnished with blacking, hanging
from a pole, and on the other arm a basket
with the blacking-balls for sale. On the top of
their poles was a sort of standard, with a printed
paper explaining the virtue of the wares; the
one said that his blacking was the best blacking
in the world; the other, that his was so good
you might eat it. A quack, by his handbill,