60 ARTHUR YOUNG AND THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE 



Difficulties of communication impeded agricultural 

 progress. Under the open field system the neighbour- 

 hood had no interest for the village ; drift lanes to closes 

 were alone important. Like ancient geographers, they 

 knew their own district, while to all beyond they applied 

 the description of impassable wastes or horrid sands. 

 Some of the great highways were in good repair. Turn- 

 pike roads had been established in 1663 ; and in the reign 

 of George II. 



No cit nor clown 

 Can gratis see the country or the town. 



Yet, in the eighteen miles of turnpike road between 

 Preston and Wigan, Young ' measured ruts four feet in 

 depth and floating in mud only from a wet summer,' and 

 passed three broken-down carts. Essex in the time of 

 Fitzherbert was famous for its bad roads. In the eigh- 

 teenth century it worthily maintained its reputation. ' A 

 mouse could barely pass a carriage in its narrow lanes,' 

 which were filled with bottomless ruts, and often choked by 

 a string of chalk wagons buried so deep in the mire that 

 they could only be extricated by thirty or forty horses. 

 ' Of all the cursed roads that ever disgraced this kingdom 

 in the very age of barbarism none ever equalled that from 

 Billericay to the " King's Head " at Tilbury,' was the 

 suffering cry of Young in 1769. The roads of Hereford- 

 shire, says Marshall a quarter of a century later, were 

 such as you might expect to find in the marshes of 

 Holland or the mountains of Switzerland. Norfolk 

 possessed such natural capacity for good roads, that 

 Charles II. suggested it should be cut up to provide 

 highways for the rest of the kingdom. Yet even in this 

 county Young found ' not a yard of good road.' In re- 



