i86 THE BATH ROAD 



them a chance of trading ; and then the women came 

 forward and did a little fortune-telling with the ladies, 

 not without joking and bantering on the part of the 

 onlookers ; while the younger gipsies brought abun- 

 dance of sweet wood-strawberries, dished up in dock- 

 leaves, than which nothing at the time could have 

 been more welcome. 



" Duriug the first half of the journey to London 

 our pace would not average more than four miles an 

 hour, and sometimes the tramps and wanderers of the 

 road would keep up with us for the hour together, 

 especially the pedlars and packmen, who would 

 display their Brummagem wares, and now and then 

 effect a sale as we rumbled alono-." 



A wide view extends from here, over the valley of 

 the Kennet, witli Marlljorough lying in its hollow, 

 and the Wiltshire downs, stretching away in bare 

 rolling masses, in the direction of Swindon. Marl- 

 borough develops itself slowly as one descends, and 

 becomes lost for a time as the panoramic view sinks 

 out of sio-ht. 



XXXII 



Theee are fine old inns at Marlborough ; coaching 

 inns, fallen from the high estate that was theirs in 

 the days when Pepys and Sheridan, my Lord 

 Chatham with his gout and his innumerable train of 

 servants, and Horace Walpole with his gimcrackery 

 and his caustic comments upon the kind of society in 

 which he found himself upon the Bath Road, stayed 



