?.\H 



THE MODERN SYSTEM 



to Chester, diverging thence to the several 

 places of their destination. I believe there 

 mio-ht be a stag-e of some kind or other that 

 undertook to deposit people within some 

 limited time in London, plying for public hire ; 

 but the manner of accomplishing the journey 

 was most usually by means of post-coaches. 

 These carriages were supplied by a person of 

 the name of Paul, of the White Lion, who 

 was celebrated at that period all over England 

 for the magnificence of his stud. With him 

 it was a hobby, and must have been a very 

 expensive one. He kept no colour but greys, 

 and of those he had always from thirty to 

 forty pairs in his stables. I can well remem- 

 ber what splendid cattle they were — his boys 

 wearing black velvet caps, gold bands and 

 tassels, and yellow silk jackets. He built his 

 own carriages, dark brown, lined with scarlet 

 morocco — doing the whole thing upon a scale 

 that we find with no post-master of the present 

 day. A party of six, with one or two servants, 

 would contract with Paul for a set-down in 

 London. He sent with them one of his own 

 carriages, with its team of greys, and postil- 

 lions : they accomplished the stages as ar- 

 ranged every day, probably of five and twenty 

 miles each, and at the end of eight or nine 

 days found themselves in the Metropolis. 

 With this fashion of travelling commenced my 

 experience of the Road, having made my first 

 visit to Babylon the Great through the agency 

 of one of these long jobs. At a later date I 

 can call to mind, on an occasion of being sent 

 for home in the Midsummer holidays, sticking 

 fast in the middle of the turnpike road between 

 Whitchurch and Malpas — the latter certainly 

 no misnomer. This antecedent of M'Adam 

 was a desert of red sand, quartered by cart- 

 wheels to the depth of two or three feet ; and 



as the phaeton in which 1 made my journey 

 ran upon wheels of about half the diameter or 

 those by which the ruts had been formed, of 

 course we were let in up to the axles, where 

 we were anchored. This took place in the 

 nineteenth century ! 



In thus describing the state of our public 

 roads at a period so little removed from our 

 own time, I am to be understood as alluding 

 to their general fitness for the purposes of 

 intercourse. No doubt very long before the 

 commencement of the present century many 

 of the leading lines from the Metropolis, for a 

 circle of from twenty to fifty miles around it, 

 were far advanced towards their present ex- 

 cellence ; but were a journey of two or three 

 hundred miles was to be performed, it went a 

 small vvay in the matter of expedition that the 

 first sixth-part of it could be accomplished at 

 eight miles an hour, where the remainder 

 could with difficulty be done at a better speed 

 than four. When the use of carriages first 

 began to supersede the old method of trans- 

 porting men and merchandise upon horseback, 

 it became absolutely necessary to devise some 

 plan for forming a solid surface upon the 

 bridle-ways of sand, which offered as little 

 support to a wheel as a Hillow to the coulter 

 of a plough. Hence arose the system of 

 paving the centre of the turnpike roads, so 

 generally adopted in most of the midland 

 counties, and of which many specimens are 

 still in existence, more particularly in Cheshire 

 and Lancashire. With the heavy wagons, 

 and their slow pace, while the great reduction 

 in the draught upon this pavement effected a 

 vast saving in horse-flesh, the roughness of the 

 surface was felt as no inconvenience. The 

 gentry, in their coaches suspended from flex- 

 ible C springs, passed smoothly over them ; 



