So entirely indeed was speed in travelling regarded by our ancestors as

of secondary importance to safety and convenience, that even in

journeying by a public coach the length of a day's journey was often

determined by the vote of the passengers. The better or worse

accommodation of the roadside inns was taken into account; and it was

"mine host's" interest to furnish good ale and beef, since he was

tolerably certain that, with such attractions within-doors, the populous

and heavy-laden mail would not pass by the sign of the Angel or the

Griffin. Long and ceremonious generally were the meals of our

forefathers; nor did they abate one jot from their courtesies when

travelling on "urgent business." On arriving at the morning or noontide

baiting-place, and after mustering in the common room of the inn, the

first thing to be done was to appoint a chairman, who mostly retained his

post of honour during the journey. At the breakfast or dinner there was

none of that indecorous hurry in eating and drinking which marks our

degenerate days. Had the travellers affected such thin potations as tea

and soup, there was ample time for them to cool. But they preferred the

sirloin and the tankard; and that no feature of a generous reception

might be wanting, the landlord would not fail to recommend his crowning

cup of sack or claret. The coachman, who might now and then feel some

anxiety to proceed, would yet merely admonish his fare that the day was

wearing on; but his scruples would vanish before a grace-cup, and he

would even connive at a proposal to take a pipe of tobacco, before the

horn was permitted to summon the passengers to resume their places.

Hence the great caution observable in the newspaper advertisements of

coach-travelling. We have now before us an announcement of the kind,

dated in the year 1751. It sets forth that, God willing, the new

Expedition coach! will leave the Maid's Head, Norwich, on Wednesday or

Thursday morning, at seven o'clock, and arrive at the Boar in Aldgate on

the Friday or Saturday, "as shall seem good" to the majority of the

passengers. It appears from the appellation of the vehicle, "the new

Expedition," that such a rate of journeying was considered to be an

advance in speed, and an innovation worthy of general notice and

patronage. Fifty years before the same journey had occupied a week; and

in 1664 Christopher Milton, the poet's brother, and afterwards one of

King James II.'s justices, had taken eight-and-forty hours to go from the

_Belle Sauvage_ to Ipswich! At the same period the stage-coach which ran

between London and Oxford required two days for a journey which is now

performed in about two hours on the Great Western line. The stage to

Exeter occupied four days. In 1703, when Prince George of Denmark

visited the stately mansion of Petworth, with the view of meeting Charles

III. of Spain, the last nine miles of the journey took six hours.

Several of the carriages employed to convey his retinue were upset or

otherwise injured; and an unlucky courier in attendance complains that

during fourteen hours he never once alighted, except when the coach

overturned or was stuck in the mud.

Direction-posts in the seventeenth century were almost unknown. Thoresby

of Leeds, the well-known antiquary, relates in his Diary, that he had

well-nigh lost his way on the great north road, one of the best in the

kingdom, and that he actually lost himself between Doncaster and York.

Pepys, travelling with his wife in his own carriage, lost his way twice

in one short hour, and on the second occasion narrowly escaped passing a

comfortless night on Salisbury Plain. So late indeed as the year 1770 no

material improvement had been effected in road-making. The highways of

Lancashire, the county which gave to the world the earliest important

railroad, were peculiarly infamous. Within the space of eighteen miles a

traveller passed three carts broken down by ruts four feet deep, that

even in summer floated with mud, and which were mended with large loose

stones shot down at random by the surveyors. So dangerous were the

Lancashire thoroughfares that one writer of the time charges all

travellers to shun them as they would the devil, "for a thousand to one

they break their necks or their limbs by overthrows or breaking down."

In the winter season stage-coaches were laid up like so many ships during

Arctic frosts, since it was impossible for any number of horses to drag

them through the intervening impediments, or for any strength of wheel or

perch to resist the rugged and precipitous inequalities of the roads.

"For all practical purposes," as Mr. Macaulay remarks, "the inhabitants

of London were further from Reading than they are now from Edinburgh, and

further from Edinburgh than they are now from Vienna."

France generally is still far behind Britain in all the appurtenances of

swift and easy travelling. In the eighteenth century it was relatively

at par with this country. The following misadventures of Voltaire and

two female companions, when on an excursion from Paris to the provinces,

are thus sketched by the pen of Thomas Carlyle:--

"Figure a lean and vivid-tempered philosopher starting from Paris,

under cloud of night, during hard frost, in a large lumbering coach,

or rather waggon, compared with which indeed the generality of modern

waggons were a luxurious conveyance. With four starved and perhaps

spavined hacks, he slowly sets forth under a mountain of bandboxes.

At his side sits the wandering virago, Marquise du Chatelet, in front

of him a serving maid, with additional bandboxes, _et divers effets

de sa maitresse_. At the next stage the postilions have to be beat

up: they came out swearing. Cloaks and fur-pelisses avail little

against the January cold; 'time and hours' are the only hope. But

lo! at the tenth mile, this Tyburn coach breaks down. One

many-voiced discordant wail shrieks through the solitude, making

night hideous--but in vain: the axle-tree has given way; the vehicle

has overset, and marchionesses, chamber-maids, bandboxes, and

philosophers are weltering in inextricable chaos. The carriage was

in the stage next Nangis, about half-way to that town, when the hind

axle-tree broke, and it tumbled on the road to M. de Voltaire's side.

Madame du Chatelet and her maid fell above him, with all their

bundles and bandboxes, for these were not tied to the front but only

piled up on both hands of the maid; and so, observing the law of

gravitation and equilibrium of bodies, they rushed toward the corner

where M. de Voltaire lay squeezed together. Under so many burdens,

which half-suffocated him, he kept shouting bitterly; but it was

impossible to change place; all had to remain as it was till the two

lackeys, one of whom was hurt by the fall, could come up, with the

postilions, to disencumber the vehicle; they first drew out all the

luggage, next the women, and then M. de Voltaire. Nothing could be

got out except by the top, that is, by the coach-door, which now

opened upwards. One of the lackeys and a postilion, clambering aloft

and fixing themselves on the body of the vehicle, drew them up as

from a well, seizing the first limb that came to hand, whether arm or

leg, and then passed them down to the two stationed below, who set

them firmly on the ground."

It was not entirely for state or distinction of ranks that noblemen of

yore were attended on their journeys by running footmen. A few

supernumerary hands were needed in case of accidents on the road. A box

of carpenters' tools formed an indispensable part of the baggage, and the

accompanying lackeys were skilful in handling them, as well as in

replacing the cast shoes of the horses, for many districts would not

afford a Wayland Smith. The state of travelling was doubtless increased

by these 'cursive appendages, bearing white wands, and decked in the gay

liveries of the house which they served. In the 'Bride of Lammermoor' we

have a graphic picture of these pedestrian accompaniments of the coaches

of "Persons of Quality."

"The privilege of nobility in those days," says Sir Walter Scott, "had

something in it impressive on the imagination: the dresses and liveries,

and number of their attendants, their style of travelling, the imposing

and almost warlike air of the armed men who surrounded them, placed them

far above the laird who travelled with his brace of footmen; and as to

rivalry from the mercantile part of the community, these would as soon

have thought of imitating the state and equipage of the Sovereign. . . .

Two running footmen, dressed in white, with black jockey caps, and long

staves in their hands, headed the train; and such was their agility that

they found no difficulty in keeping the necessary advance which the

etiquette of their station required before the carriage and horsemen.

Onward they came at an easy swinging trot, arguing unwearied speed in

their long-breathed calling. Behind these glowing meteors, who footed it

as if the avenger of blood had been behind them, came a cloud of dust,

raised by riders who preceded, attended, or followed, the

state-carriage."

In times when persons of quality journeyed in this stately and sumptuous

fashion, it was often needful to mend the roads specially on their

account. The approach of a Royal Progress, or the Lord Lieutenant of the

county, was a signal for a general 'turn-out' of labourers and masons to

lay gravel over the most suspicious places, and to render the bridges at

least temporarily secure. Scarcely a Quarter sessions in the seventeenth

century passed over without presentments from the Grand Jury against

certain districts of the county; and few and favoured were the districts

which escaped a good round fine from the Judges, as a set-off against the

bruises and other damages which their Lordships sustained on their

circuit. It was no unusual accident for the Court to be kept waiting

many hours for the arrival of the Judge. Either his Lordship had been

dug out of a bog, or his official wardrobe had been carried away by a

bridgeless stream. Often, too, the patience of jurors was severely tried

by the non-appearance of counsel. These inconveniences became more

apparent after it had ceased to be the fashion for the Judges and the Bar

to travel on horseback from one assize-town to another. Cowper, writing

to his pedestrian friend Rose, playfully imagines that when he should

attain to the dignity of the ermine, he would institute the practice of

'walking' the circuit. But equestrian circuits were long in use, and the

Bar turned out as if their chase had been deer instead of John Doe and

Richard Roe. When however it came to be thought indecorous for a Judge

to wear jack-boots, the danger of wheel-carriages was sensibly felt by

the luminaries of the law, and the periodical journeys of the votaries of

Themis tended directly to the correction of ways as well as to the

suppression of vice. A zealous High Sheriff or a loyal Lord Lieutenant

would sometimes contribute out of his private purse to the security of

the Bench: and the more enterprising towns began to think it concerned

their honour that the delegates of Majesty should reach their gates

scatheless and unwearied by the toils of the road.

But road-making entrusted to the separate discretion of parochial

authorities was often performed in a slovenly, and always in an

unsystematic, manner. In adopting a direct or a circuitous line of way

innumerable predilections interfered, and parishes not rarely indulged in

acrimonious controversies, especially when the time came for walking the

boundaries. The dispute between broad and narrow gauges is indeed merely

a modern form of a long-standing quarrel. A market-town and a seaport

would naturally desire to have ample verge and room enough on their

highways for the transport of grain, hides, and timber from the interior,

and for carriage of cloth and manufactured or imported goods to the

inland. On the other hand isolated parishes would contend that driftways

were all-sufficient for their demands, and that they could house their

crops or bring their flour from the mill through the same ruts which had

served their forefathers. But in Charles II.'s reign, after the civil

wars had given an impetus to the public mind, and while, although our

foreign policy was disgraceful, and each cabinet more indecorous than its

predecessor, the country at large was steadily advancing in prosperity,

this lack of uniformity was acknowledged to be no longer tolerable.

Compulsory labour and parochial rates, or hired labour and occasional

outlays, were found alike insufficient to ensure good roads. An act was

accordingly passed authorizing a small toll to pay the needful expenses.

The turnpike-gate to which we are accustomed was originally a bar

supported on two posts on the opposite sides of the road, and the

collector sat, _sub dio_, at his seat of customs. It was long however

before the advantages of this plan were acknowledged by the people.

Riots, resembling the Rebecca riots, were of frequent occurrence in the

less-frequented counties: the road-surveyor was as odious as the

collector of the chimney-tax; the toll-bar was seen blazing at night; its

guardian deemed himself fortunate to escape with a few kicks; and it was

not until a much later day that a public or private coach could trundle

along the roads without encountering deep and dislocating ruts, or

rocking over a surface of unbroken stones. Frost and rain were more

effective than the duly appointed surveyor in breaking up these rude

materials, and reducing the surface to something resembling a level.

A few years since some of the most strenuous opponents of railways were

to be found among the squirearchy. "Why," argued these rural magnates,

"should our woods be levelled and our corn-lands bisected, our game

scared away and our parks disfigured by noise and smoke, to suit the

convenience of the dingy denizens of Manchester, or the purse-proud

merchants of Liverpool?" Similar arguments were urged not more than a

century ago against the formation of new turnpike roads. The bittern, it

was said, would be driven from his pool, the fox from his earth, the wild

fowl would be frightened away from the marshes, and many a fine haunch of

venison would be sent to London markets without the proper ceremonies of

turning off and running down the buck. Merrie England could not exist

without miry roads. In 1760 there was no turnpike road between the port

of Lynn and the great corn and cattle market at Norwich. In 1762 an

opulent gentleman, who had resided for a generation of mortal life in

Lisbon, was desirous to revisit his paternal home among the meres of the

eastern counties. His wish was further stimulated by the circumstance

that his sister and sole surviving relative dwelt beside one of the great

Broads, which, in these regions, penetrate far inland from the sea-coast.

From London to the capital town of his native county his way was

tolerably smooth and prosperous. The distance was about a hundred and

ten miles, and by the aid of a mail coach he performed the journey in

three days. But now commenced his real labours. Between his sister's

dwelling and the provincial capital lay some twenty miles of alternate

ridges of gravel and morass. Had he been a young man he might have

walked safely and speedily under the guidance of some frugal swain or

tripping dairymaid returning from market. Had he been a wise man he

would have hired a nag, and trotted soberly along such bridle-roads as he

found. But he was neither a young nor a wise man. His better years had

been passed in the counting-houses of Santarem, and his bodily activity

was impaired by long and copious infusions of generous old port. So, as

he could neither walk nor ride, he deposited his portly and withal

somewhat gouty person in a coach-and-six, and set forth upon his

fraternal quest. He had little reason to plume himself upon the pomp and

circumstance of his equipage. The six hired coach-horses, albeit of the

strong Flanders breed, were in a few hours engulfed in a black pool; his

coach, or rather his travelling mansion, was inextricably sunk in the

same slimy hollow; and the merchant himself, whose journeys had hitherto

been made on the sober back of a Lusitanian mule, was ignominiously

dragged by two cowherds through his coach-windows,--and mounted on one of

the wheelers, he was brought back, drenched and weary, to the place

whence he set out. In high dudgeon, the purveyor of Bacchus returned to

London, and could never be induced to resume the search of his "Anna

soror."

Such imperfect means of transit materially affected both the manners and

the intelligence of the age. Postal arrangements indeed existed, but of

the rudest kind. It was common for letters to be left at the principal

inns on the main road, to be delivered when called for. They remained

often in the bar until the address was illegible, or smoke had dyed the

paper a saffron-yellow. Special announcements of deaths and births or

urgent business were necessarily entrusted to special messengers; and the

title and superscription of these privately-sent letters generally

contain very minute and even peremptory injunctions of a certain and

swift delivery. But for such cautions, a rich uncle might have been

quietly inurned without his expectant nephews hearing of his decease; and

a whole college kept waiting, till the year of grace had passed, for the

news of a fat rector's much-desired apoplexy. The death of good Queen

Bess was not known in some of the remoter parishes of Devonshire until

the courtiers of James had ceased to wear mourning for her. The Hebrews

of York heard with quivering lips and ashen brows of the massacre of

their people in London at Richard I.'s coronation, six weeks after it was

perpetrated; and the churches of the Orkneys put up prayers for King

James three months after the abdicated monarch had fled to St. Germain's.

There was in nearly all rural districts the king of London and the king

of the immediate neighbourhood. The Walpoles and Townshends in their own

domains were far more formidable personages than George I.; and at a time

when the King of Prussia's picture was commonly hung out at ale-house

doors as an incitement to try the ale, {72} an ancient dame near

Doncaster exclaimed, on being informed of his majesty's decease, "Lord a'

mercy, is he! and, pray, who is to be the new Lord Mayor?"

A considerable improvement in the roads of Great Britain took place in

the latter half of the preceding century. This change was partly owing

to the advancing civilization of the larger towns and cities, and partly

to the march of the Highlanders into England under Prince Charles Edward,

in 1745. At that period communication was so imperfect that the

Pretender had advanced a hundred miles from Edinburgh without exciting

any peculiar alarm in the midland or southern counties, while in the

metropolis itself no certain information could be obtained of the

movements of the rebel army for some days after their departure

southward. The Duke of Cumberland's march northward was much impeded by

the difficulty of transporting his park of artillery. But after the

decisive day of Culloden, the erection of Fort William, and the

establishment of military posts at the foot of the Grampians, the

expediency of readier communication between the capitals of South and

North Britain was universally felt. Scotland could henceforward be held

in permanent subordination only by means of good military highways.

Accordingly in the year 1782 we find a German traveller (Moritz) speaking

of the roads in the neighbourhood of London as "incomparable." He is

astonished "how they got them so firm and solid;" and he thus describes

his stage of sixteen miles from Dartford, the place of his

disembarkation, to the metropolis:--

"Our little party now separated and got into two post-chaises, each

of which held three persons, though it must be owned that three

cannot sit quite so commodiously in these chaises as two; the hire of

a post-chaise is a shilling for every English mile. They may be

compared to our extra-posts, because they are to be had at all times.

But these carriages are very neat and lightly built, so that you

hardly perceive their motion, as they roll along these firm smooth

roads; they have windows in front and on both sides; the horses are

generally good, and the postilions particularly smart and active, and

always ride at a full trot. The one we had wore his hair cut short,

a round hat, and a brown jacket, of tolerably fine cloth, with a

nosegay in his bosom. Now and then, when he drove very hard, he

looked round, and with a smile seemed to solicit our approbation. A

thousand charming spots and beautiful landscapes, on which my eye

would long have dwelt with rapture, were now rapidly passed with the

speed of an arrow."

It was one of Samuel Johnson's wishes that he might be driven rapidly in

a post-chaise, with a pretty woman, capable of understanding his

conversation, for his travelling companion. The smartness of the English

postboy was emulated in France,--not, as might have been expected, by his

professional brethren, who until very recently retained their ponderous

jackboots, three-cornered hats, and heavy knotted whips, but by the

younger members of _la haute noblesse_. To look like an English jockey

or postilion, was long the object of fashionable ambition with Parisian

dandies. "Vous me crottez, Monsieur," said poor patient Louis XVI. to

one of these exquisite centaurs, as he rode beside the royal carriage

near Versailles. "Oui, Sire, a l'Anglaise," rejoined the self-satisfied

dandy, understanding his majesty to have complimented his _trotting_

(_trottez_), and taking it as a tribute to the skill of his imitation.

Pedlars and packhorses were a necessary accompaniment of bad and narrow

roads. The latter have long disappeared from our highways; the former

linger in less-frequented districts of the country, but miserably shorn

of their former importance. A licensed hawker is now a very unromantic

personage. His comings and goings attract no more attention among the

rustics or at the squire's hall than the passing by of a plough or a

sheep. The fixed shop has deprived him of his utility, and daily

newspapers of his attractions. He is content to sell his waistcoat or

handkerchief pieces; but he is no longer the oracle of the village inn or

the housekeeper's room. In the days however when neither draper's nor

haberdasher's wares could be purchased without taking a day's journey at

the least through miry ways to some considerable market-town, the pedlar

was the merchant and newsman of the neighbourhood. He was as loquacious

as a barber. He was nearly as ubiquitous as the Wandering Jew. He had

his winter circuit and his summer circuit. He was as regular in the

delivery of news as the postman; nay, he often forestalled that

government official in bringing down the latest intelligence of a landing

on the French coast; of an execution at Tyburn; of a meteor in the sky;

of a strike at Spitalfields; and of prices in the London markets. He was

a favourite with the village crones, for he brought down with him the

latest medicines for ague, rheumatism, and the evil. He wrote

love-letters for village beauties. He instructed alehouse politicians in

the last speech of Bolingbroke, Walpole, or Pitt. His tea, which often

had paid no duty, emitted a savour and fragrance unknown to the dried

sloe-leaves vended by ordinary grocers. He was the milliner of rural

belles. He was the purveyor for village songsters, having ever in his

pack the most modern and captivating lace and ribbons, and the newest

song and madrigal. He was competent by his experience to advise in the

adjustment of top-knots and farthingales, and to show rustic beaux the

last cock of the hat and the most approved method of wielding a cane. He

was an oral 'Belle Assemblee.' He was full of "quips and cranks and

wreathed smiles." 'Indifferent' honest, he was not the less welcome for

being a bit of a picaroon. Autolycus, the very type of his

profession,--and such as the pedlar was in the days of Queen Bess, such

also was he in the days of George II.,--was littered under Mercury, and a

snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. His songs would draw three souls out

of one weaver. His pack was furnished with

"Lawn, as white as driven snow;

Cyprus, black as e'er was crow;

Gloves, as sweet as damask roses,

Masks for faces and for noses;

Bugle-bracelet, necklace amber,

Perfume for a lady's chamber;

Golden quoifs and stomachers

For my lads to give their dears;

Pins and poking-sticks of steel,--

What maids lack from head to heel."

Then did he chant after the following fashion, at "holy-ales and

festivals"--

"Will you buy any tape,

Or lace for your cape,

My dainty duck, my dear--a?

Any silk, any thread,

Any toys for your head,

Of the new'st and fin'st, fin'st wear--a?

Come to the pedlar,

Money's a meddler,

That doth alter all men's wear--a!"

One accident in pedlar life was some drawback to its general

pleasantness. He often bore not only a great charge of goods, but of

gold also. His steps were dogged by robbers, and many a skeleton, since

disinterred in solitary places, is the mortal framework of some wandering

merchant who had met with foul play on his circuit. The packman's ghost

too is no unusual spectre in many of our shires.

How important a personage among the _dramatis personae_ of rural life the

pedlar was, at even a recent period, in the northern counties of England,

may be inferred from Wordsworth's choice of him for the hero of his

'Excursion.' Much ridicule, and even obloquy, did the staunch poet of

Rydal incur for choosing such a character, when he might have taken Laras

and Conrads by the score, and been praised for his choice. But "the

vagrant merchant under a heavy load," being a portion of the mountain

life which surrounded the poet's home, was better than any hero of

romance for his purpose; and a younger generation has confirmed the

poet's choice of a hero, and few remain now to mock at the Pedlar.

Wordsworth's pedlar indeed was no Bryce Snailsfoot, nor Donald Bean, nor

even such a one as was first cousin to Andrew Fairservice, but rather, by

virtue of a poetic diploma, a philosopher of the ancient stamp. For

"From his native hills

He wandered far; much did he see of men,

Their manners, their enjoyments and pursuits,

Their passions and their feelings; chiefly those

Essential and eternal in the heart,

That, 'mid the simpler forms of rural life

Exist more simple in their elements,

And speak a plainer language. In the woods,

A lone enthusiast, and among the fields,

Itinerant in this labour, he had passed

The better portion of his time; and there

Spontaneously had his affections thriven

Amid the bounties of the year, the peace

And liberty of nature; there he kept

In solitude and solitary thought,

His mind in a just equipoise of love."

Lucian, in his vision of Hades, beheld the Shades of the Dead set by

pitiless Minos or Rhadamanthus to perform tasks most alien to their

occupations while they were yet denizens of earth. Nero, according to

Rabelais, who improves on Lucian's hint, was an angler in the Lake of

Darkness; Alexander the Great a cobbler of shoes; and "imperial Caesar

dead and turned to clay" a hawker of petty wares. It was easier to fit

the shadows of monarchs with employment than it would be to find business

for departed coachmen. "A coachman, Sir," said one of these worthies to

ourselves, who was sorrowfully contemplating the approaching day of his

extinction by a nearly completed railway,--"a coachman, if he really be

one, is fit for nothing else. The hand which has from boyhood--or rather

horsekeeper-hood--grasped the reins, cannot close upon the chisel or the

shuttle. He cannot sink into a book-keeper, for his fingers could as

soon handle a lancet as a pen. His bread is gone when his stable-door is

shut." We attempted to console him by pointing out that it was a law of

nature for certain races of mankind to become extinct. Were not the Red

Men fading away before the sons of the White Spirit? Was not the Cornish

tongue, and were not the old Cornish manners, for ever lost to earth, on

the day when the old shrewish fishwife, Dolly Pentrath, departed this

life towards the middle of the reign of King George III.? Seeing these

things are so, and that "all beneath the moon doth suffer change," why

should coachmen endure for ever? But our consolation was poured into

deaf ears, and some two years afterwards we recognized our desponding

Jehu under the mournful disfigurements of the driver of a hearse. The

days of pedlars and stage-coachmen have reached their eve, and look not

for restoration. They are waning into the Hades of extinct races, with

the sumpnours and the limitours of the Canterbury Pilgrims.

We have described some of the difficulties and dangers to which

travellers were subjected in the days of Old Roads. Yet the ancient

Highways were not without their attending compensations. Pleasant it was

to travel in company, as Chaucer voucheth: pleasant to linger by the way,

as Montaigne testifies. To meditative and imaginative persons there was

delight in sauntering through a fair country, viewing leisurely its

rivers, meadows, hills, and towns. Burton prescribes travelling among

his cures for melancholy, and he would not have recommended railway speed

or even a fast coach to sad and timid men. His advice presupposed sober

progress, gliding down rivers, patient winding round lofty hills,

contemplation by woodsides and in green meadows, relaxation not tension

of nerve and brain. "No better physick," he says, "for a melancholy man

than change of aire and variety of places, to travel abroad and see

fashions. Leo Afer speakes of many of his countrymen so cured without

all other physick. No man, saith Lipsius, in an epistle to Phil.

Lanoius, a noble friend of his, now ready to make a voyage, can be such a

stock or stone, whom that pleasant speculation of countries, cities,

towns, rivers, will not affect. For peregrination charms our senses with

such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy that

never travelled, a kinde of prisoner, and pity his case, that from his

cradle to old age beholds the same still; insomuch that Rhasis doth not

only commend but enjoyn travell, and such variety of objects to a

melancholy man, and to lye in diverse innes, to be drawn into severall

companies. A good prospect alone will ease melancholy, as Gomesius

contends. The citizens of Barcino, saith he, are much delighted with

that pleasant prospect their city hath into the sea, which, like that of

old Athens, besides AEgina, Salamina, and other pleasant islands, had all

the variety of delicious objects; so are those Neapolitanes and

inhabitants of Genua, to see the ships, boats, and passengers go by, out

of their windows, their whole cities being sited on the side of an hill

like Pera by Constantinople. Yet these are too great a distance: some

are especially affected with such objects as be near, to see passengers

go by in some great road-way or boats in a river, _in subjectum forum

despicere_, to oversee a fair, a market-place, or out of a pleasant

window into some thoroughfare street to behold a continual concourse, a

promiscuous rout, coming and going."

Indifferent roads and uneasy carriages, riding post, and dread of

highwaymen, darkness or the inclemency of the seasons, led, as by a

direct consequence, to the construction of excellent inns in our island.

The superiority of our English hotels in the seventeenth century is thus

described by the most picturesque of modern historians:--"From a very

early period," says Mr. Macaulay, "the inns of England had been renowned.

Our first great poet had described the excellent accommodation which they

afforded to the pilgrims of the fourteenth century. Nine and twenty

persons, with their horses, found room in the wide chambers and stables

of the Tabard, in Southwark. The food was of the best, and the wines

such as drew the company to drink largely. Two hundred years later,

under the reign of Elizabeth, William Harrison gave a lively description

of the plenty and comfort of the great hostelries. The continent of

Europe, he said, could show nothing like them. There were some in which

two or three hundred people, with their horses, could without difficulty

be lodged and fed. The bedding, the tapestry, above all the abundance of

clean and fine linen was matter of wonder. Valuable plate was often set

on the tables. Nay, there were signs which had cost thirty or forty

pounds. {82} In the seventeenth century, England abounded with excellent

inns of every rank. The traveller sometimes in a small village lighted

on a public-house, such as Walton has described, where the brick floor

was swept clean, where the walls were stuck round with ballads, where the

sheets smelt of lavender, and where a blazing fire, a cup of good ale,

and a dish of trout fresh from the neighbouring brook, were to be

procured at small charge. At the larger houses of entertainment were to

be found beds hung with silk, choice cookery, and claret equal to the

best which was drunk in London. The innkeepers too, it was said, were

not like other innkeepers. On the continent the landlord was the tyrant

of those who crossed his threshold. In England he was a servant. Never

was an Englishman more at home than when he took his ease in his inn.

"Many conveniences which were unknown at Hampton Court and Whitehall

in the seventeenth century, are to be found in our modern hotels.

Yet on the whole it is certain that the improvement of our houses of

public entertainment has by no means kept pace with the improvement

of our roads and conveyances. Nor is this strange; for it is evident

that, all other circumstances being supposed equal, the inns will be

best where the means of locomotion are worst. The quicker the rate

of travelling, the less important is it that there should be numerous

agreeable resting-places for the travellers. A hundred and sixty

years ago a person who came up to the capital from a remote county

generally required twelve or fifteen meals, and lodging for five or

six nights by the way. If he were a great man, he expected the meals

and lodging to be comfortable and even luxurious. At present we fly

from York or Chester to London by the light of a single winter's day.

At present therefore a traveller seldom interrupts his journey merely

for the sake of rest and refreshment. The consequence is that

hundreds of excellent inns have fallen into decay. In a short time

no good houses of that description will be found, except at places

where strangers are likely to be detained by business or pleasure."

Highwaymen, pedlars, inns, coachmen, and well-appointed coaches have now

nearly vanished from our roads. Some of the more excellent breeds of

English horses have gone with them, or will soon follow them. In another

generation no one will survive who has seen a Norfolk hackney. This race

of sure-footed indefatigable trotters has already become so few in number

that "a child may count them." "The oldest inhabitant"--that universal

referee with some persons on all disputed points--never set eye on a

genuine Flemish coach-horse in England; and the gallant high-stepping

hybrid--half thoroughbred, half hackney--which whirled along the fast

coaches at the rate of twelve miles in the hour will in a few years be

nowhere found. The art of 'putting to' four horses in a few seconds will

become one of the 'artes deperditae;' and the science of driving so as to

divide equally the weight and the speed between the team, and to

apportion the strength of the cattle to the variations of the road, will

have become a tradition. Perfect as mechanism was the discipline of a

well-trained leader. He knew the road, and the duty expected of him.

Docile and towardly during his seven- or nine-mile stage, he refused to

perform more than his allotted task. Attached to his yoke-fellow, he

resented the intrusion of a stranger into his harness: and a mere change

of hands on the box would often convert the willing steed into a recusant

against the collar, whom neither soothing nor severity would induce to

budge a step. Some suffering indeed has been spared to the equine world

by the substitution of brass and iron for blood and sinews; but the

poetry of the road is gone with the _quadrigae_ that a few years ago

tripped lightly and proudly over the level of the Macadamized road. No

latter-day Homer will again indite such a verse as

"[Greek text]."

The Four-in-hand Club is extinct, or, with those ancient charioteers at

Troy, courses in Hades over meadows of asphodel.

Of the old roads of the Continent during the Dark and Middle Ages, we

have little to record. The central energy of Rome had suffered collapse.

Europe was partitioned into feeble kingdoms and powerful fiefs. War was

the normal condition of its provinces; the sports of the field were

unfavourable to agriculture, and directly opposed to the promotion of

commerce and the growth of towns. So long as it was conducive to the

pleasures of the manorial lord to keep large tracts of land uncultivated,

it was contrary to his interests to form great thoroughfares. We have in

the 'Tesoretto' of Brunetto a striking picture of the desolation of

northern Spain in the thirteenth century. He thus describes his journey

over the plain of Roncesvalles.

"There a scholar I espied,

On a bay mule that did ride.

Well away! what fearful ground

In that savage part I found.

If of art I aught could ken,

Well behoved me use it then.

More I look'd, the more I deem'd

That it wild and desert seem'd:

Not a road was there in sight;

Not a house and not a wight;

Not a bird and not a brute,

Not a rill, and not a root;

Not an emmet, not a fly,

Not a thing I mote descry:

Sore I doubted therewithal

Whether death would me befall.

Nor was wonder, for around

Full three hundred miles of ground,

Right across on every side

Lay the desert bare and wide." {87}

As Ser Brunetto was despatched on very urgent business, it may be

presumed that he was journeying by the most direct road which he could

find. Until the reign of Charlemagne indeed there were but few towns,

and consequently few roads, in Germany. The population generally was

widely spread over the surface of the land. "A house, with its stables

and farm-buildings," says Mr. Hallam, "surrounded by a hedge or

inclosure, was called a court, or as we find it in our law-books, a

curtilage: the toft or homestead of a more genuine English dialect. One

of these, with the adjacent arable fields and woods, had the name of a

villa or manse. Several manses composed a march; and several marches

formed a Pagus, or district." There was indeed little temptation or need

to move from place to place, when nearly every article of consumption was

produced or wrought at home. For several centuries there is perhaps not

a vestige to be discovered of any considerable manufacture. Each

district furnished for itself its own articles of common utility. Rich

men kept domestic artizans among their servants; even kings, in the ninth

century, had their clothes made by the women upon their farms. The

weaver, the smith, and the currier were often born and bred on the estate

where they pursued their several crafts.

The position of Rome as the ecclesiastical metropolis of the world caused

both a general and periodical recourse of embassies, deputations,

pilgrims, and travellers to the Italian peninsula, yet we cannot discover

that any especial conveniences were provided for the wayfarers. Even in

the great and solemn years of the Jubilee the roads were merely patched

up, and the bridges temporarily repaired by the Roman government, and

only in such places as had become actually impassable. The floating

capital of the more commercial of the Italian Republics was employed

rather upon their docks and arsenals than upon their roads and causeways.

Venice indeed, which for central vigour was the most genuine offspring of

Imperial Rome, paved its continental possessions with broad

thoroughfares. But neither Padua, Ravenna, nor Florence followed the

example of the Adriatic Queen. On the contrary, Dante, when in his

descent to Hell he meets with any peculiarly difficult or precipitous

track, frequently compares it to some road well known to his countrymen,

which fallen rocks had blocked up, or a wintry flood had rendered

impermeable. Spain presented, as it presents at this day, to the

engineer, almost insurmountable difficulties. The Moorish provinces of

the south alone possessed any tolerable roads; nor were the ways of

Arragon or Castile mended after the wealth of Mexico and Peru had been

poured into the Spanish exchequer. Portugal owed its first good roads in

modern times to its good king Emmanuel; and the Dutch and Flemings, the

most commercial people of Europe from the thirteenth to the eighteenth

centuries, found in their rivers and canals an easier transit than roads

would have afforded them, for the wares which they brought from Archangel

on the one hand and from the Spice Islands on the other. The military

restlessness of France indeed led to the earlier formation of great

roads. Yet France was a land long divided in itself; and the Duchies of

Burgundy and Bretagne had little in common with the enterprising spirit

of Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles. Upon the whole the roads of England,

bad as they were, were at least upon a par with those of the Continent.

In this retrospect, hasty and imperfect as it is, we must not pass over

the roads of Asia. And here ancient history affords us at least glimpses

of definite knowledge. In that portion of the Asiatic continent which is

seated between the Euxine Sea, the chain of Mount Taurus, and the AEgean,

the crowded population, the activity of the Greek colonies, and the

necessity for direct communication with the interior and seat of

government, led to the construction of good and uniform highways. In the

Ionian Revolt large bodies of troops were readily brought to bear upon

the insurgents, and the preparations of Xerxes for his invasion of Greece

cannot have been made without a previous provision of military roads. An

exact scale of taxation was drawn up by Darius Hystaspes for all the

provinces of his vast empire; and as the system survived the extinction

of the royal house of Persia, and was adopted by the Macedonian

conquerors in all its more important details, it may be inferred that

such system worked with tolerable regularity and success. But as the

tithes and tolls of Persia were paid both in money and in kind, it is

obvious that the communication between the capital and satrapies of the

empire must have been well organized. Such organization implies the

existence of main roads radiating from Sousa and Ecbatana. Nor are we

left to conjecture only. The establishment of running posts and couriers

was a distinguishing feature of the Persian empire; and the speed at

which they journeyed from the sea-coast or the banks of the Hyphasis to

the seat of government proves that the roads were in good order and the

stations and relays of runners well ascertained. The Anabasis of

Cyrus--his "march up" the country--affords another proof. The narrative

of Xenophon, in its earlier portions at least, and so long as the ten

thousand Greeks kept to the main roads, resembles in the precision with

which it marks distances and stations a Roman Itinerary or a Bradshaw's

Guide. On this day, says the historical captain of mercenaries, we

marched seven parasangs and bivouacked in an empty fort; on such a day we

marched five parasangs and encamped in a pleasant park or 'paradise' of

the great king. It is only after the Greeks have been forced from the

'Road-down' by the clouds of Persian cavalry, that they enter upon more

rugged and devious mountain-paths. The account of Xenophon is confirmed

by Arrian in his history of Alexander's Anabasis; and so long as the

Macedonian conqueror was within the bounds of Persia proper, we rarely

meet with any impediments to his progress arising out of the badness of

the roads.

We have made some mention of the more conspicuous of ancient travellers.

But travelling, either for business or pleasure, among the moderns, dates

from the era of the Crusades. The barriers of the East were once again

thrown open by that general ferment in the European world. Piety, the

passion of enterprise, the dawning instincts of commerce, a new thirst

for exotic luxuries, all contributed to inspire a desire for exploring

the seats of the most ancient civilization. To this desire and to its

effects we owe some of the most graphic and entertaining of modern

writings. If we were, through any misadventure, sent to jail, we would

stipulate for permission to carry into our cell Hakluyt's Voyages. The

narratives of modern travellers are often learned, more often flimsy, and

from the universality of locomotion, much given, like the prayers of the

old Pharisees, to tedious repetitions. A tour in Greece or Italy now

affects us with unutterable weariness. A journey from London to York

affords more real novelty than many of these excursions. Sir Charles

Fellows or Mr. Layard write in the spirit of the old travellers, and we

would willingly wander any-whither with George Borrow. But, for the most

part, the art of writing travels is lost--its imaginativeness, its

credulity, its cherishing of mystery, and its proneness to awe. The old

travellers are never sentimental--and sentiment is the very bane of

road-books,--and they never describe for description's sake. The world

was much too wonderful in their eyes for such unprofitable excursions of

fancy. Beauty and danger, difficulty and strangeness, novel fashions and

unknown garbs, were to them earnest and absorbing realities. The aspect

of cities and havens, and leagues of forest and solitary plains, were to

them "as a banner broad unfurled," and inscribed with mystic signs and

legends. They were not whirled about from place to place: they had

leisure to mark the forms and the colours of objects. They were in

perils often: if they escaped shipwreck they were in danger of slavery;

they journeyed with their lives in their hands, and were often

yoke-fellows with hunger and nakedness, and the fury of the elements.

Luckily for us who read their narratives, they were most unscientific,

and ascribed the howling of the night-wind, the bursting of icebergs, the

noise of tempests, and the echoes that traverse boundless plains after

great heats, or are imprisoned in rock and fell, to the voice of demons

exulting or lamenting to each other. We now cross the desert with nearly

as much ease as we hail an omnibus, or book ourselves for Paris. But

such was not the spirit in which Marco Polo, in the thirteenth, century,

traversed the wilderness of Lop.

"In the city of Lop," says the hardy and veracious merchant of

Venice, "they who desire to pass over the desert cause all

necessaries to be provided for them; and when victuals begin to fail

in the desert, they kill their camels and asses and eat them. They

mostly make it their choice to use camels, because they are sustained

with little meat, and bear great burdens. They must purvey victuals

for a month to cross it only, for to go through it lengthways would

require a year's time. They go through the sands and barren

mountains, and daily find water; yet at times it is so little that it

will hardly suffice fifty or a hundred men with their beasts; and in

three or four places the water is salt and bitter. The rest of the

road, for eight-and-twenty days, is very good. In it there are not

either beasts or birds; they say that there dwell many spirits in

this wilderness, which cause great and marvellous illusions to

travellers, and make them perish; for if any stay behind, and cannot

see his company, he shall be called by his name, and so going out of

the way be lost. {94a} In night they hear as it were the noise of a

company, which, taking to be theirs, they perish likewise. Concerts

of musical instruments are sometimes heard in the air, like noise of

drums and armies. {94b} They go therefore close together, hang bells

on their beasts' neck, and set marks, if any stray."

The Hebrews, dispersed over every region of the world, civilized or

uncivilized, were necessarily great travellers. There was, in the first

place, their central connection with Palestine, which they generally

visited once in their lives, and whither thousands of them, as age

advanced, flocked to lay their bones. There were the claims of kindred,

prompting them to seek out and visit the children of dispersion, whether

seated on the banks of the Vistula, the Euphrates, or the Nile; and there

were the incentives of commerce, which drew them through the perils of

land and sea. From the instructions given to their travelling agents in

the medieval period, we derive much curious information respecting the

internal state of Europe. It were indeed much to be wished that

competent Hebrew scholars, instead of devoting themselves to the inane

obscurity of the Rabbins, would employ their learning upon the history of

the Jews in the Middle Ages. Much curious and interesting knowledge

might be disinterred from the piles of Hebrew manuscripts that now lie

amid the dust and spiders' webs of the Escurial. Above all things the

itineraries of the Jewish travellers should be explored, as containing

probably the most minute and accurate description of the social state of

Europe at that period. Both for their personal security and for the

despatch of their affairs, it was essential for the Jews to obtain and

circulate the most exact information of the markets and population of the

cities on their route. They required to know whom to shun and whom to

seek; the towns in which the Jews' quarter was most commodious and

secure; and the intervening tracts, often many days' journey in extent,

which were most free from robbers or feudal oppressors. The following

draft of instructions for a Spanish Jew, whose occasions led him from

Spain to Greece, will afford the reader some conception of the historical

value of such itineraries. Its date is apparently not later than the

sixteenth century:--

"Whoever wants to go from Saragossa, Huesca, Teruel, or any other

town in Arragon, to Constantinople, the great city where the Turk

reigns, must follow the route herein contained, and beware of the

dangers that we are going to specify. The fugitive must first of all

go to Jaca, where they will ask him the object of his voyage; he must

say that he escapes to France, on account of his creditors, and he

will not be disturbed. Thence he will go to Canfranc, and thence to

Oleron, the first town in France, where, if questioned respecting the

object of his voyage, he must say that he is going on a pilgrimage to

Our Lady of Loretto. From Oleron to Pau, to Tarbes, to Toulouse, to

Gaillac, to Villefranche, and to Lyons: in this latter place the

traveller will be obliged to show whatever money he carries, and pay

one out of every forty pieces, whether silver or gold. At Lyons he

will ask his way to Milan, and say that he is going to visit St. Mark

of Venice; but when within five leagues of the former city, he must

leave it on the right, and pass behind the mountain, so as not to

enter the territory of the emperor. From thence he must direct his

course towards the State of Venice; and when he arrives at Verona,

not go through the city, for they make every one pay one real at the

gates. In Verona he must ask his way to Padua, where he will embark

on the river and go to Venice; the passage will cost him half a real.

He will land on the Piazza di San Marco, and then he must look out

for an inn to go to; he must be cautious in making his bargain with

the innkeeper first; he must not pay more than half a real a day for

his bed; and he is warned not to let the landlord provide him with

anything, for he will charge him double for everything. On the day

after his arrival he must go to the Piazza di San Marco, and there he

will see some men with white turbans, and others with yellow; the

first are Turks, the latter Jews. From these he will get every

assistance and advice, whether he wants to go to Salonica or to any

port of Greece."

At the time when Marco Polo, Rubruquis, Benjamin of Tudela, etc.,

journeyed in Asia, the East was still unspoiled--it was still the

authentic Ophir of gold and barbaric pearl, and gorgeous armour, and

solemn processions. At the same time Asia was but little behind Europe

in the general elements of civilization, so that the contrast which is so

glaring at the present day, between the state of a sultan and a pasha,

and the squalid poverty of his subjects and servants, was then less

startling. The courts of Europe were comparatively poor and mean, while

the palaces of the oriental monarchs powerfully affected the imagination

of the traveller. At a time too when the manners of the European

nobility exhibited little refinement, the dignified courtesy and

elaborate ceremonies of Bagdad and Ispahan were not less imposing than

the pomp and splendour of their garb and its decorations. The Eastern

chivalry also was to the full as efficient as that of the West; for what

it lacked in weight of metal, it gained in superior adroitness in the use

of weapons, in the greater facility of its movements, and the better

temper and flexibility of its armour. All these features of a

high--though, as it proved, a less enduring--civilization are noted with

wonder and applause by the early travellers, who cannot sufficiently

express their admiration of such opulence and such brilliant displays.

But for our immediate purpose, we can only speak of the great roads and

inns of "Cathaian Khan." Marco Polo thus describes the great roads and

excellent inns in the neighbourhood of Cambalu.

"There are many public roads from the city of Cambalu, which conduct

to the neighbouring provinces, and in every one of them, at the end

of five-and-twenty or thirty miles, are lodgings or inns built,

called _lambs_, that is, post-houses, with large and fair courts,

chambers furnished with beds and other provisions, every way fit to

entertain great men, nay, even to lodge a king. The provisions are

laid in from the country adjacent: there are about four hundred

horses, which are in readiness for messengers and ambassadors, who

there leave their tired horses, and take fresh; and in mountainous

places, where are no villages, the Great Khan sends people to

inhabit, about ten thousand at a place, where these lambs or

post-houses are built, and the people cultivating the ground for

their provisions. These excellent regulations continue unto the

utmost limits of the empire, so that, on the public ways throughout

the whole of the Khan's dominions, about ten thousand of the king's

inns are found; and the number of the horses appointed for the

service of the messengers in those inns are more than two hundred

thousand--a thing almost incredible: hence it is that in a little

while, with change of men and horses, intelligence comes, without

stop, to the court. The horses are employed by turns, so that of the

four hundred, two hundred are in the stables ready, the other two

hundred at grass, each a month at a time. Their cities also, that

are adjoining to rivers and lakes, are appointed to have ferry-boats

in readiness for the posts, and cities on the borders of deserts are

directed to have horses and provisions for the use of such as pass

through those deserts: and they have a reasonable allowance for this

service from the Khan. In cases of great moment the posts will ride

two hundred miles a-day, or sometimes two hundred and fifty. Also

they ride all night, foot-posts running by them with lights, if the

moon does not shine.

"There are also between these inns other habitations, three or four

miles distant from one another, in which there are a few houses,

where foot-posts live, having each of them his girdle hung full of

shrill-sounding bells. These keep themselves always ready, and as

often as the Khan's letters are sent to them convey them speedily to

the posts at the next village, who, hearing the sound of the

foot-post coming when at a distance, expect him and receive his

letters, and presently carry them to the next watch; and so, the

letters passing through several hands, are conveyed, without delay,

to the place whither they ought to come; and it often happens that by

this the king learns news, or receives new fruits, from a place ten

days' journey distant, in two days. As, for instance, fruits growing

at Cambalu in the morning, by the next day at night are at Xanadu."

Such were the general features of the old roads of Asia and Europe

centuries ago. But it must be regarded as one of the caprices of

civilization that the only roads, in the fifteenth century, which

rivalled the Roman Viae, were constructed in another hemisphere, and by a

people whom the Europeans were wont to regard with disdain, as barbarous.

The gold and silver furniture of the Peruvian palaces excited the

cupidity of the Spanish invaders; but even avarice, for a moment, yielded

to admiration, when the file-leaders of Pizarro's columns beheld for the

first time the great Roads of the Incas. The Peruvians have been

eloquently vindicated from the charge of barbarism by a modern historian,

native of the great continent which Columbus discovered. From the moment

when Cortes had gained the crest of the sierra of Ahualco, his progress

was comparatively easy. Broad and even roads or long and solid causeways

across the lakes and marshes conducted the Spaniards and their allies

through the valley of Mexico or Tenochtitlan; and as they descended from

the regions of sleet and snow, a gay and gorgeous panorama greeted them

on every side, "of water, woodland, and cultivated plains," diversified

with bold and shadowy hills, and studded with the roofs and towers of

populous cities. The running posts of the Aztecs rivalled in speed and

regularity their brethren in Cathay, and Montezuma could boast that his

dominions displayed at least one element of civilization--rapid

communication between the provinces and the capital--which in that age

and long afterwards was unknown to the empire of his rival and conqueror,

the 'white king beyond the seas.' The roads of Peru were however more

wonderful than even those of Mexico. We now borrow Mr. Prescott's

description.

"Those," he says, "who may distrust the accounts of Peruvian

industry, will find their doubts removed on a visit to the country.

The traveller still meets, especially in the regions of the

tableland, with memorials of the past, remains of temples, palaces,

fortresses, terraced mountains, great military roads, aqueducts, and

other public works, which, whatever degree of science they may

display in their execution, astonish him by their number, the massive

character of the materials, and the grandeur of the design. Among

them, perhaps the most remarkable are the great roads, the broken

remains of which are still in sufficient preservation to attest their

former magnificence. There were many of their roads traversing

different parts of the kingdom; but the most considerable were the

two which extended from Quito to Cuzco, and again diverging from the

capital, continued in a southern direction towards Chili.

"One of these roads passed over the grand plateau, and the other

along the lowlands on the borders of the ocean. The former was much

the more difficult achievement, from the character of the country.

It was conducted over pathless sierras buried in snow; galleries were

cut for leagues through the living rock; rivers were crossed by means

of bridges that swung suspended in the air; precipices were scaled by

stair-ways hewn out of the native bed; ravines of hideous depth were

filled up with solid masonry: in short, all the difficulties that

beset a wild and mountainous region, and which might appal the most

courageous engineer of modern times, were encountered and

successfully overcome. The length of the road, of which scattered

fragments only remain, is variously estimated at from fifteen hundred

to two thousand miles, and stone pillars, in the manner of European

milestones, were erected at stated intervals of somewhat more than a

league, all along the route.

"The other great road of the Incas lay through the level country

between the Andes and the ocean. It was constructed in a different

manner, as demanded by the nature of the ground, which was for the

most part low, and much of it sandy. The causeway was raised on a

high embankment of earth, and defended on either side by a parapet or

wall of clay; and trees and odoriferous shrubs were placed along the

margin, regaling the sense of the traveller with their perfume, and

refreshing him by their shade, so grateful under the burning sky of

the tropics. In the midst of sandy wastes, which occasionally

intervened, where the light and volatile soil was incapable of

sustaining a road, huge piles were driven into the ground to indicate

the route of the traveller."

Mr. Prescott might have added, that these magnificent works were

constructed by a people ignorant of the use of iron, and unsupplied with

wheel-carriages. The only beast of burden was the llama; and the long

files of these patient and docile animals, winding along the broad

causeways of the Andes recalled to the invaders the long strings of mules

stepping in single file along the rocky paths cut out from the sides of

the Iberian sierras. Iron and fire-arms alone were wanting to the

Peruvians to enable them to rival the most potent of the European

kingdoms both in the arts and arms which maintain empires.

Of New Roads we shall speak very briefly, and rather of their effects

than of their history. It would indeed be idle, in a rapid sketch like

the present, to be diffuse upon a subject which those who travel may

study with their own eyes, and those who stay at home may learn from many

excellent recent books. {104}

The defiance of natural obstacles, the massive piles of masonry, the

filling up of valleys, the perforated hill, the arch bestriding the river

or the morass, the attraction of towns towards the line of transit, the

creation of new markets, the connection of inland cities with the coast,

the interweaving of populations hitherto isolated from one another, the

increase of land-carriage, the running to and fro of thousands whose

fathers were born and died in the same town or the same district,--all

these are features in common with the Flaminian and AEmilian ways, and

with the roads laid down by the genius and enterprise of Stephenson. The

old and the new roads, both in their resemblance and in their difference,

suggest and express many of the organic distinctions and affinities of

the old and the new phases of civilization.

For, apart from a feature of distinction already noticed, that in the

ancient world all or nearly all public works were executed by and for the

State, we may here remark that in England especially, where

centralization is feeble, and local or personal interests are strong, the

construction and conduct--the _curatio_, as the Romans phrased it--of

great roads are entirely in the hands of voluntary associations, and the

State interferes so far only as to shield individual life and property

from wanton wrong and aggression. Secondly, that the primary purpose of

the Roman Viae was that of extending and securing conquest, while the

primary end of the railroad is to diffuse and facilitate commerce. In

the one case, civilization was a fortunate accident. Gaul imbibed the

arts and manners of Latium, because Gaul had been first subdued, and was

permanently held by the strong Roman arm. But, in the other case,

traffic and communication are the direct objects, while war, if hereafter

wars should arise, will be the crime or the infelicity of those who

engage in it. War indeed, as all ancient history shows, was the normal

condition of Heathendom; Peace, although so often in the past ages rudely

interrupted, is the normal state of Christendom. Again, the Roman road

rendered invasion, encroachment, and the lust of conquest easy to

project, execute, and gratify; whereas the modern Viae, by bringing

nations into speedy and immediate contact with one another, are

diminishing with each year the chances of hostile collision. The Roman

roads, with all their magnificent apparatus of bridges, causeways, of

uplifted hollows and levelled heights, were constructed at an enormous

cost of manual labour and of personal oppression and suffering, and with

comparatively a trifling amount of science. But the railroad is the idea

of the philosopher embodied by the free and cheerfully accorded toil of

the labourer and artizan. When an Appius Claudius or a Marcus Flaminius

determined to mark the year of his consulship or censorship by some

colossal road-work, the husbandman was summoned from his field, the

herdsman was brought from his pasture-ground, a contingent was demanded

from the allies, a conscription was enforced upon the subjects of Rome,

harder task-work was imposed on the slave, and more irksome punishment

inflicted upon the prisoner. {107} The great works of antiquity indeed,

from the pyramids downward to the mausoleum of Hadrian, are too often the

monuments of human toil, privation, and death. But the roads of our more

fortunate times are not cemented with the tears of myriads, nor reared

upon piles of bleached bones. On the contrary, the construction of them

has given employment to thousands who, but for them, would have crowded

to the parish for relief, or have wandered anxiously in search of work,

or sauntered listlessly at the alehouse door in despair of finding it.

The great radii of peaceful communication have been executed by willing

hands, and a fair day's wages has been the recompense of a fair day's

work. We do not undervalue the skill and energy of the engineers of

antiquity. Yet by their fruits we know and judge of the works of the

Curatores Viarum, and of our Brunels and Stephensons. "Peace has its

victories no less than war." And the modern road does not more surpass

the ancient in the science of its constructors, than in the objects for

which it has been planned and executed.

But before these results were attained, the air was tried, and the water

was tried, as likely to afford a more rapid medium of transit and

communication than the solid earth. Of balloons and canals however our

limits do not permit us to speak, although either of them might well

furnish a little volume like the one now presented to the reader. We are

now concerned, however, with the social and civilizing effects of

Railways.

"For a succession of ages," says Dr. Lardner, "the little intercourse

that was maintained between the various parts of Great Britain was

effected almost exclusively by rude footpaths, traversed by pedestrians,

or at best by horses. Hills were surmounted, valleys crossed, and rivers

forded by these rude agents of transport, in the same manner as the

savage and settler of the backwoods of America or the slopes of the Rocky

Mountains communicate with each other."

The effects of high civilization may perhaps be best estimated by its

contrast--the rude and infant stages of society. Let us imagine for a

moment the destruction of Railways, the neglect of Turnpike and Highway

Roads, and the consequent interruption of our present modes of rapid and

regular locomotion.

Gentle Reader, in the first place, your breakfast is rendered thoroughly

uncomfortable, or, like Viola's history--a blank. Your copy of the

'Times' or 'Morning Chronicle' has not arrived; your letters are lying

six miles off, and you have to send a special messenger--who may, and

will most probably, get drunk on his road--to fetch them. If you should

chance to be in business, you will hear of a profitable investment for

capital just two hours after some one else has closed the bargain; if you

are a physician, you will most probably miss a lucrative patient; if a

lawyer, a most seductive fee. All calculations will be disturbed.

Manchester and Norwich will be more remote from each other than Paris and

Marseilles. In place of a railway station there will be a swamp, and

instead of a turnpike gate, a wood. Mighty towns and spacious cities

will shrink into obscure villages; smiling and fertile districts relapse

into original barrenness; kinsfolk and acquaintance be put nearly out of

sight. There are no mails; there is no penny post; the last new novel

will not reach you. The Bishop of Exeter may become a cardinal, or

Colonel Sibthorpe commander of the forces, six weeks before you hear of

their promotion. The union between Scotland and England will be again as

good as divorced by distance and difficulty of transit. Your fish from

Billingsgate will be ancient, and your tailor will be sure to disappoint

you of your mourning or your marriage suit. Your commodious carpet-bag

must be exchanged for a trunk capacious enough to contain all your

"household stuff," except the kitchen range; your utmost speed will

amount to difficult stages of six miles an hour; you will journey in

terror; and you will arrive at your inn with the fixed determination of

never again quitting your home.

We will conclude our rambles over the old roads of four continents with

the words of one whose wisdom was not surpassed by his wit, although his

wit surpassed most of the wisdom of his contemporaries. "It is of some

importance," says Sydney Smith, (it is wrong to add 'the Reverend,' for

no one says _Mr._ William Shakspeare or _Mr._ John Milton,) "at what

period a man is born. A young man alive at this period hardly knows to

what improvement of human life he has been introduced; and I would bring

before his notice the changes which have taken place in England since I

began to breathe the breath of life--a period amounting to seventy years.

Gas was unknown. I groped about the streets of London in all but utter

darkness of a twinkling oil lamp, under the protection of watchmen in

their grand climacteric, and exposed to every species of degradation and

insult. I have been nine hours in sailing from Dover to Calais, before

the invention of steam. It took me nine hours to go from Taunton to Bath

before the invention of railroads, and I now go in six hours from Taunton

to London! In going from Taunton to Bath I suffered between ten thousand

and twelve thousand severe contusions, before stone-breaking Macadam was

born. I paid fifteen pounds in a single year for repairs of

carriage-springs on the pavement of London, and I now glide without noise

or fracture on wooden pavement. I can walk, by the assistance of the

police, from one end of London to the other without molestation; or, if

tired, get into a cheap and active cab, instead of those cottages on

wheels which the hackney coaches were at the beginning of my life.

Whatever miseries I suffered, there was no post to whisk my complaints

for a single penny to the remotest corners of the empire; and yet, in

spite of all these privations, I lived on quietly, and am now ashamed

that I was not more discontented, and utterly surprised that all these

changes and inventions did not occur two centuries ago. I forgot to add

that, as the basket of stagecoaches in which the luggage was then carried

had no springs, your clothes were rubbed all to pieces; and that, even in

the best society, one-third of the gentlemen at least were always drunk."

And now, Gentle Reader, have we not kept both troth and tryste with you?

We put it to you seriously, did you ever chance to read a more rambling

volume than the one now presented to you? You may talk to a pleasant

companion in your first or second class carriage without losing the

thread of our argument; you may indulge in a comfortable nap without its

being necessary for you to mark the page where you dropped off. It may

be better to begin at the beginning, and read in ordinary fashion to the

close. But it will not be much worse if you have a fancy for commencing

with the end. In short, you cannot go wrong, so you do but read in a

charitable spirit--not being extreme to mark the much which is amiss.

Finally, we entreat of you to read this book in the temper which a

certain English worthy recommends for his own.

"One or two things yet I was desirous to have amended, if I could,

concerning the manner of handling this my subject, for which I must

apologize, _deprecari_, and upon better advice give the friendly

reader notice. I neglect phrases, and labour wholly to inform my

reader's understanding, not to please his ear. 'Tis my study to

express myself readily and plainly as it happens: so that, as a river

runs, sometimes precipitate and swift, then dull and slow: now

direct, then _per ambages_: now deep, then shallow: now muddy, then

clear: now broad, then narrow; doth my style flow now serious, then

light, as the present subject required, or as at the time I was

affected. And if thou vouchsafe to read this Treatise, it shall seem

to thee no otherwise than the way to an ordinary traveller, sometimes

fair, sometimes foul; here champion, there enclosed; barren in one

place, better soil in another. By woods, groves, hills, dales,

plains, and lead thee _per ardua montium et lubrica vallium et

roscida cespitum et glebosa camporum_, through variety of objects, to

that which thou shalt like or haply dislike."

If thou art scholarly, Gentle Reader, running to and fro on Old or New

Roads may do thee good. It will afford thee time to rest eye and hand,

and furnish thee with more glimpses of this working world than are to be

seen from a library-window. But if it chance that thou be not clerkly,

then mayest thou both 'run to and fro' and 'increase thy knowledge' even

with the aid of so poor a guide as he who now bids thee "Heartily

Farewell."

Footnotes:

{9} The appellation of this, the earliest Roman road, affords another

instructive example of the connection between the necessary wants of man

and civilization. Salt, among the first needs of the city of Romulus,

produced the path from the Salt-works; and the convenience of the

Salt-work Road led ultimately to the construction of the Appian,

Flaminian, and AEmilian.

{10} The first introduction of stirrups was probably not earlier than

the end of the sixth century, A.D. See Beckmann's 'History of Inventions

and Discoveries,' Eng. Trans., 1817, vol. ii. pp. 255-270.

{18} It is acknowledged on all hands that no people talk so much about

weather as the English. It is also true that no literature contains so

many descriptions of the sensations dependent on the seasons. A French

or Italian poet generally goes to Arcadia to fetch images proper for "a

fine day." We, on the contrary, paint from the life. Chaucer

luxuriates, in his opening lines of the 'Canterbury Tales,' on the

blessings and virtues of "April shoures." Our modern novelists are

always very diffuse meteorologists. In lands where the seasons are

unhappily uniform, the natives are debarred from this unfailing topic of

conversation. Hajji Baba, in Mr. Morier's pleasant tale, is amazed at

being told at Ispahan, by the surgeon of the English Embassy, that "it

was a fine day." On the banks of the South American rivers, mosquitoes

afford a useful substitute for meteorological remarks.--"How did you

sleep last night?" "Sleep! not a wink. I was hitting at the mosquitoes

all night, and am, you see, bitten like a roach notwithstanding."

{21a} The historian might have added to this description of Roman

carriages an allusion to the sumptuousness of Roman harness. Apuleius

informs us that "necklaces of gold and silver thread embroidered with

pearls encircled the necks of the horses; that the head-bands glittered

with gems; and the saddles, traces, and reins were cased in bright

ribbons."

{21b} Not always, on horseback: for while the knight, as his Latin

designation _eques_ implied, was always mounted on a charger, his lady

sometimes rode beside him on an ass:--

"A loyely ladie rode him faire beside,

Upon a lowly asse, more white than snow;

Yet she much whiter; but the same did hide

Under a vele, that wimpled was full low;

And over all a black stole did she throw:

As one that inly mourned so was she sad,

And heavie sate upon her palfrey slow."

{30} We do not remember to have seen it remarked that Shakspeare has

described all the good points of a horse, as well as (in the passage in

the text) every imaginable bad one. The horse of Adonis was

"Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,

Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide,

High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong,

Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide."

{48} Riding as a Squire of Dames was occasionally a service of some

danger. The long hair-pins which the ladies wore in their capillary

towers were, as it appears from the following story, "as sharp as any

swords." "Pardon me, good signor Don Quixote," says the duenna Donna

Rodriguez to that unrivalled knight, "but as often as I call to mind my

unhappy spouse, my eyes are brim-full. With what stateliness did he use

to carry my lady behind him on a puissant mule, for in those days coaches

and side-saddles were not in fashion, and the ladies rode behind their

squires. On a certain day, at the entrance into St. James's Street in

Madrid, which is very narrow, a judge of one of the courts happened to be

coming out with two of his officers, and as soon as my good squire saw

him--so well-bred and punctilious was my husband--he turned his mule

about, as if he designed to wait upon him home. My lady, who was behind

him, said to him in a low voice, 'What are you doing, blockhead? am I not

here?' The Judge civilly stopped his horse and said, 'Keep on your way,

Sir, for it is my business rather to wait on my lady Donna Casilda.' My

husband persisted, cap in hand, in his intention to wait upon the Judge,

which my lady perceiving, full of choler and indignation, she pulled out

a great pin and stuck it into his back; whereupon my husband bawled out,

and, writhing his body, down he came with his lady to the ground. My

mistress was forced to walk home on foot, and my husband went to a

barber-surgeon's, telling him he was run quite through and through the

bowels. But because of this, and also because he was a little

short-sighted, my lady turned him away; the grief whereof, I believe,

verily was the death of him."

{56} One of the most affecting of Wordsworth's pictures of rural manners

is his sketch of the Old Cumberland Beggar. The opening lines of this

excellent poem mark the usual station of the mendicant:--

"I saw an aged Beggar in my walk;

And he was seated by the highway side,

On a low structure of rude masonry

Built at the foot of a huge hill, that they

Who lead their horses down the steep rough road

May thence remount at ease."

{72} The practice of complimenting distinguished personages by

suspending their portraits over ale-house doors sometimes indeed led to

ludicrous consequences. We all remember the conversion of Sir Roger de

Coverley's good-humoured visage into a frowning Saracen's Head. Soon

after Dr. Watson had been installed at Llandaff, a rural Boniface

exchanged for his original sign of the Cock an effigy of his new

Diocesan. But somehow the ale was not so well relished by his customers

as formerly. The head of the Bishop proved less inviting to the thirsty

than the comb and spurs of the original Chanticleer. So to win back

again the golden opinions of the public, mine host adopted an ingenious

device. From reverence to the Church he retained the portrait of Dr.

Watson, but as a concession to popular preferences he caused to be

written under it the following inscription:--

"This is the old Cock."

{82} The splendour and costliness of English signboards seem to have

struck foreigners very forcibly. Moritz, from whom we have already

quoted, says that "the amazing large signs which, at the entrance of

villages, hang in the middle of the street, being fastened to large

beams, which are extended across the street from one house to another

opposite to it, particularly struck me. These sign-posts have the

appearance of gates, or gateways, for which I at first took them, but the

whole apparatus, unnecessarily large as it seems to be, is intended for

nothing more than to tell the inquisitive traveller that there is an

inn." It marks in some degree the territorial prejudices of the English

people that the principal inn of a hamlet usually "hangs out" the crest

of the family, if it be indeed an ancient house, at the neighbouring hall

or great house, whether it be a Swan, a Griffin, a St. George, or other

heraldic or historic emblem or hero.

{87} We have availed ourselves of Mr. Cary's skilful translation of

Brunetto's description of his journey from Florence to Valladolid,

whither he had been sent on an embassy by the Guelph party:--"Un

scolaio--Sur un muletto baio," etc.

{94a} It is perhaps scarcely necessary to observe how much indebted our

great poets have been to the early travellers. Milton had perhaps this

passage in his memory when he wrote the speech of the Lady in 'Comus':--

"A thousand fantasies

Begin to throng into my memory,

Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire,

And aery tongues, that syllable men's names

On sands and shores and desert wildernesses."

{94b} "The isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,

That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again."--_Tempest_, act iii. sc. 2.

{104} Among the most satisfactory of such works, we would especially

mention 'A History of the English Railway,' by John Francis, in two

volumes, 8vo, to which our own sketch is under great obligations.

{107} The staff of an ancient _Curator Viarum_ resembled very nearly the

accompaniments of a modern Railway contractor. "Caius Gracchus," says

Plutarch, "was appointed supreme director for making roads, etc. The

people were charmed to see him followed by such numbers of architects,

artificers, ambassadors, and magistrates: and he applied to the whole

with as much activity, and despatched it with as much ease, as if there

had been only one thing for him to attend to: insomuch that they who both

hated and feared the man were struck with his amazing industry, and the

celerity of his operations."