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north of York and west of Exeter, goods were carried by long trains of pack-horses. These strong and patient beasts, the breed of which is now extinct,1 were attended by a class of men who seem to have borne much resemblance to the Spanish muleteers. A traveler of humble condition often found it convenient to perform a journey mounted on a pack-saddle between two baskets, under the care of these hardy guides. The expense of this mode of conveyance was small. But the caravan moved at a foot's pace, and in winter the cold was often insupportable.

The rich commonly traveled in their own carriages, with at least four horses. Cotton,2 the facetious poet, attempted to go from London to the Peak with a single pair, but found at St. Albans that the journey would be insupportably tedious, and altered his plan. A coach and six is in our time never seen, except as part of some pageant. The frequent mention, therefore, of such equipages in old books is likely to mislead us. We attribute to magnificence what was really the effect of a very disagreeable necessity. People in the time of Charles the Second traveled with six horses, because with a smaller number there was great danger of sticking fast in the mire. Nor were even six horses always sufficient. Vanbrugh, in the succeeding generation, described with great humor the way in which a country gentleman, newly chosen a member of Parliament,

1 extinct. Give a synonym.

3 Vanbrugh, an eminent archi

2 Cotton. Charles Cotton (1630-tect and dramatist of the eigh1687) had considerable celebrity in teenth century.

his day as a humorous poet.

4 succeeding. Give a synonym.

went up to London. On that occasion all the exertions of six beasts, two of which had been taken from the plow, could not save the family coach from being embedded in a quagmire.

Public carriages had recently been much improved. During the years which immediately followed the Restoration, a diligence 2 ran between London and Oxford in two days. The passengers slept at Beaconsfield. At length, in the spring of 1669, a great and daring innovation was attempted. It was announced that a vehicle, described as the Flying Coach, would perform the whole journey between sunrise and sunset. This spirited undertaking was solemnly considered and sanctioned by the heads of the university, and appears to have excited the same sort of interest which is excited in our own time by the opening of a new railway. The vice-chancellor, by a notice affixed in all public places, prescribed the hour and place of departure. The success of the experiment was complete. At six in the morning the carriage began to move from before the ancient front of All Souls' College; and at seven in the evening the adventurous gentlemen who had run the first risk were safely deposited at their inn in London.

4

The emulation of the sister university 5 was moved; and soon a diligence was set up which in one day car

1 the Restoration: that is, the restoration of the Stuart dynasty in the person of Charles II. (1660).

2 diligence, the early name for stage-coach.

3 spirited. Note the irony, and point out subsequent examples. 4 emulation, rivalry.

5 the sister university: that is, Cambridge.

ried passengers from Cambridge to the capital. At the close of the reign of Charles the Second, flying carriages ran thrice a week from London to the chief towns. But no stage-coach, indeed no stage-wagon, appears to have proceeded farther north than York, or farther west than Exeter. The ordinary day's journey of a flying coach was about fifty miles in the summer; but in winter, when the ways were bad and the nights long, little more than thirty. The Chester coach, the York coach, and the Exeter coach generally reached London in four days during the fine season, but at Christmas not till the sixth day. The passengers, six in number, were all seated in the carriage; for accidents were so frequent that it would have been most perilous1 to mount the roof. The ordinary fare was about twopence-halfpenny a mile in summer, and somewhat more in winter.

This mode of traveling, which by Englishmen of the present day would be regarded as insufferably slow, seemed to our ancestors wonderfully and indeed alarmingly rapid. In a work published a few months before the death of Charles the Second, the flying coaches are extolled as far superior to any similar vehicles ever known in the world. Their velocity 2 is the subject of special commendation, and is triumphantly contrasted with the sluggish pace of the Continental posts. But with boasts like these was mingled the sound of complaint and invective. The interests of large classes had been unfavorably affected by the establishment of the

perilous. Give a synonym. 2 velocity. Sce Glossary.

3 complaint and invective. Dis

criminate.

new diligences; and, as usual, many persons were, from mere stupidity and obstinacy, disposed to clamor against the innovation, simply because it was an innovation.

It was vehemently argued that this mode of conveyance would be fatal to the breed of horses, and to the noble art of horsemanship; that the Thames, which had long been an important nursery of seamen, would cease to be the chief thoroughfare from London up to Windsor and down to Gravesend; that saddlers and spurriers1 would be ruined by hundreds; that numerous inns, at which mounted travelers had been in the habit of stopping, would be deserted, and would no longer pay any rent; that the new carriages were too hot in summer and too cold in winter; that the passengers were grievously annoyed by invalids and crying children; that the coach sometimes reached the inn so late that it was impossible to get supper, and sometimes started so early that it was impossible to get breakfast.

On these grounds it was gravely recommended that no public coach should be permitted to have more than four horses, to start oftener than once a week, or to go more than thirty miles a day. It was hoped, that, if this regulation 2 were adopted, all except the sick and the lame would return to the old mode of traveling. Petitions embodying such opinions as these were presented to the king in council from several companies of the City of London, from several provincial towns, and from the justices of several counties.

1 spurriers. What is the root? | 2 regulation. Give a synonym.

We smile at these things. It is not impossible that our descendants, when they read the history of the opposition offered by cupidity and prejudice to the improvements of the nineteenth century, may smile in their turn.

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[The following is from Macaulay's elaborate essay on Dr. Johnson, written in review of Boswell's Johnson, edited by John Wilson Crocker.]

FROM nature, Johnson had received an uncouth figure, a diseased constitution, and an irritable temper. The manner in which the earlier years of his manhood had been passed had given to his demeanor, and even to his moral character, some peculiarities appalling to the civilized beings who were the companions of his old age. The perverse irregularity of his hours, the slovenliness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion interrupted by long intervals of sluggishness, his strange abstinence and his equally strange voracity, his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant rudeness and the occasional ferocity of his manners in society, made him, in the opinion of those with whom he lived during the last twenty years of his life, a complete original.

An original he was, undoubtedly, in some respects. But if we possessed full information concerning those

1 opposition offered, etc. This is an allusion to the ridiculous objections urged against railroads at the time of their introduction into England.

2 strenuous exertion... sluggishness. Point out the pairs of contrasted terms in this sentence. 3 benevolence. See Glossary. 4 undoubtedly. Analyze.

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