THE EXETER ROAD 129 



istics arc neither my object nor my forte. I wish only 

 as I hurry along- them (and this reminds me that Exeter 

 is still ninety-one miles seven furlongs off) to give faint 

 glimpses of the old life on the old roads, looking upon 

 that life from all possible different points of view, and 

 trying more to render its sentiment perhaps than to write 

 its history. 



My readers, then, who have been loitering with me all 

 this while at Salisbury, may remember that had they 

 becn travelling to Exeter in the finest age of coaching 

 by the Telegraph, the fastest coach of the age, or nearly 

 so, they would not have been at Salisbury at all, for the 

 Telegraph diverged from the Salisbury road at Andover ; 

 and as " the Lunnon Coach," a perpetual source of won- 

 der to staring rustics at work on the wayside, went to 

 Exeter by Amesbury, Deptford, Wincanton, and 

 Ilminster, I propose to follow this route as far as 

 Deptford Inn, which is, or was, for its days are gone, a 

 very celebrated house, standing about twenty-four miles 

 from Andover, on the middle of Salisbury Plain. And 

 then I shall leave the Telegraph to go on to Mere and 

 Wincanton alone, and returning to Salisbury once more 

 from Deptford (it is only eleven and three-quarter miles 

 on the worst branch line in Europe), shall go down to 

 Exeter by the route taken by the Telegraph's great rival, 

 the Quicksilver, which did (I never can sufficiently 

 impress my readers with the astounding fact) the 175 

 miles from London in eighteen hours, and went by 

 Shaftesbury, Sherborne, Yeovil, Crewkerne, and Chard. 



Meanwhile we have to do with the Telegraph, and the 

 first thing that the Telegraph Coach did after leaving 

 Andover was to turn to the right, and do a three-mile 

 stretch of collar work to Weyhill, at which place is 

 annually held a fair, which would make those people 

 who have never seen one stare. This festivity, which is 

 indeed quite an un-English and out-of-the-way sight, 

 begins on October 10th (Michaelmas Eve) and goes on 

 for six days, during which all the country-side seems 



K 



