THE BATH ROAD 



13 



formality; in her office of page holding her lover's horse as 

 he exchanged thrusts with her better half Delightful 

 society ! So picturesquely free from care and scruple ! 

 — who would not have lived in those days ? The trav- 

 ellers in the Flying Machines of Charles the Second's 

 day must have seen much of that brilliant, sparkling, 

 outrageous society fly by them. That seems to me to 

 have been the chief advantage of the Flying Machines. 

 Everybody flew by them — at least everybody who was 

 worth seeing. 



This Hounslow Heath, which the Flying Machine has 

 now left behind it — the creaky, mud-covered old caravan 

 is drawn up now outside the Inn, at Cranford, the horses 

 are in the stable feeding, the coachman with a pot of beer 

 in his hand lying about his heroic resistance to six high- 

 waymen — it seems to have been the province of coach- 

 men at all periods to lie — (" compare^ Tom," said I, " I 

 think you can whistle louder, hit a horse harder, and tell 

 a bigger lie than any one I ever knew " — words spoken 

 to a great coachman on the Northern Road, Tom 

 Hennessey by name, to which, with Spartan frankness, he 

 replied, " You're right, sir,") — but this is a digression — 

 the Hounslow Heath, I say, which the Flying Machine 

 has left behind it, holds a prominent place at all periods 

 in the Annals of tJie Roads. To us it is chiefly remark- 

 able for its powder mills, which explode once or twice a 

 year ; but besides highwaymen in Charles the Second's 

 time (in the spontaneous production of which it, in all 

 ages, held a high place in national esteem), it had in 

 James the Second's time a camp of thirteen thousand 

 men placed there to overawe the London which was ripe 

 for the rebellion, and which had an exactly opposite 

 eflect — a visit to Hounslow Camp becoming a favourite 

 holiday amusement for Londoners ; and later on in the 

 great Era of Coaching, when it was the first stage out of 

 London for all coaches going westward, there used to be 

 kept here for the purposes of posting and coaching two 

 thousand five hundred horses, which perhaps gives as 



