308 MAN AND NATURE. 



The outward aspect of all that belongs to social life 

 and habitation was in these early centuries rudely 

 simple. The baronial mansions or castles frowned over 

 the miserable villages or huts which lay around them. 

 The grades in society were then few ; and the passage 

 an abrupt one from the feudal lord to the mere serf of 

 the soil. Yet we must note here one strange anomaly 

 of this period, viz., the earliest erections of those 

 wonderful cathedrals which still excite the admiration, 

 if not the envy, of the architectural science of our 

 own day. There is something of mystery as well as 

 anomaly in this matter, which has not hitherto 

 been adequately explained. History, revelling in its 

 record of battles and sieges, is wellnigh silent as 

 to these better and more lasting triumphs of human 

 power. 



The country at large was nearly destitute of any 

 other than rude lanes and little less rude highways, on 

 which, but two centuries ago, a four-horse carriage 

 could hardly accomplish in a day the distance which a 

 railway-carriage now sweeps over in a single hour. 

 The provision for travelling on horseback was of better 

 kind ; and we have the records of many extraordinary 

 journeys thus performed ; such as the night's ride of 

 Henry II. from London to Dover, with the incident of 

 an .eclipse of the moon on his way ; the sixty hours' 

 ride of Sir Eobert Carey from London to Edinburgh, 

 to announce to James the death of Elizabeth ; and the 

 still more rapid communication by horse-messengers 

 between Charles I., w r hen at York in 1642, and the 

 Parliament in London. The general state of travelling 



