The Merry Past 



system, the coaches and the roads on which they ran 

 had never been better. 



The roads, indeed, had reached what was practi- 

 cally perfection, their condition being a great con- 

 trast to that which had prevailed at the beginning of 

 the eighteenth century, when they had been in a 

 terrible state. In 1703 when Prince George of Den- 

 mark went from Windsor to Petworth to meet Charles 

 the Third of Spain, that journey, a distance of about 

 forty miles, occupied a space of fourteen hours, 

 although those who travelled it did not get out of 

 their carriages, save when they were overturned or 

 stuck fast in the mire, until they reached their destina- 

 tion. At times the coach had Hterally to be carried 

 over impassable stretches of road on the shoulders of 

 sturdy natives. The last nine miles of the way took 

 six hours to negotiate. When communication 

 by roads was in such a condition as this, it is clear 

 that even in the equipages of the nobility, the only 

 description of horse that could have been used was 

 such as we now find occupied in the severest labours 

 of farm husbandry. In the middle of the eighteenth 

 century, travelling by public carriages was in a deplor- 

 able condition, the best scarcely accomplishing four 

 miles an hour, and many of them not reaching that 

 rate of pace. 



Even in 181 1 it was no very unusual thing for a 

 gentleman to find himself obliged to return to his 

 coachmaker an open carriage, in consequence of its 

 fore-wheels not being high enough to keep the bed off 

 the crown of the road. 



153 



