THE BATH ROAD 



seeing there is the Lazar's-bath in this city, I doubt 

 not but many a good Lazarus, the true object of 

 charity, may beg therein." The road, then, to this 

 City of Springs must have witnessed a motley throng. 



II 



The history of travelling, from the Creation to the 

 present time, may be divided into four periods — those 

 of no coaches, slow coaches, fast coaches, and railways. 

 The " no-coach " period is a lengthy one, stretching, 

 in fact, from the beginning of things, through the 

 ages, down to the days of the Romans, and so on to 

 the era when pack-horses conveyed travellers and 

 o;oods alono- the uncertain tracks, whicli in the 

 Middle Ages were all that remained of the highways 

 built by that masterful race. The " slow-coach " era 

 was preceded by an age when those few people who 

 travelled at all went either on horseback, with their 

 women-folk clinging on behind them, or else were 



wealthy enough to be able to atlbrd the keep or hire 

 of a " chariot," as the carriages of that time were 

 named. That sinful old reprobate, Samuel Pepys, 

 lived in the last days of the " no-coach " period, and 

 saw the arrival of the slow coaches. He was one of 

 those who used a chariot, and his " Diary " is full of 

 accounts of how^, on his innumerable journeys, he lost 

 his way because of the badness of the roads, which then 

 ran through vast stretches of unenclosed, uncultivated, 

 and sparsely inhabited country, and w^re so fearfully 

 bad that in many places the drivers did not dare to 

 attempt such veritable " sloughs of despond," but 



