22 ANNALS OF THE ROAD. 



her that he forgot to give it to her when he slept there 

 two years before. Young Scott, who was not character- 

 ised by overmuch bashfulness, said to him : ' Friend, 

 have you seen the motto on this coach?' 'No!' 

 ' Then look at it, for I think giving her only sixpence 

 now is neither sat cito, nor sat bene' 



The state of the roads and of the means of com- 

 munication are forcibly and graphically, if not elegantly, 

 depicted by Arthur Young, who travelled in Lancashire 

 about the year 1770. 'I know not,' he says, 'in the 

 whole range of language, terms sufficiently expressive to 

 describe this infernal road. Let me most seriously 

 caution all travellers who may accidentally propose to 

 travel this terrible country to avoid it as they would 

 the devil, for a thousand to one they break their necks 

 or their limbs by overthrows or breakings-down. They 

 will here meet with ruts, which I actually measured, four 

 feet deep, and floating with mud, only from a wet 

 summer, what therefore must it be after a winter ? The 

 only mending it receives is tumbling in some loose 

 stones, which serves no other purpose than jolting a 

 carriage in the most intolerable manner. These are not 

 merely opinions but facts, for I actually passed three 

 carts broken down in these eighteen miles of execrable 

 memory.' Subsequently, in speaking of a turnpike road 

 near Warrington, he says, ' This is a paved road most 

 infamously bad. Any person would imagine the people 

 of the country had made it with a view to immediate 

 destruction, for the breadth is only sufficient for one 

 carriage, consequently it is cut at once with ruts, and you 



