CHAPTER XIY 



THE OLD ENGLAND OF COACHING DAYS 



This is the time, iioav that Ave have passed the 

 threshokl of a new era, A\li(>n okl hmdmarks are 

 disappearing everywhere around us as we gaze, 

 and the Old Enghxnd that we have known is 

 being dispossessed and disestablished by a new 

 and strange, an inhospitable and alien England 

 of foreign j)l^itocrats — this is the psychological 

 moment for a brief revicAv of Avliat this England 

 of ours Avas like in the old davs of stao^e-coach 

 and mail. 



If Ave could recapture those times Ave should 

 find them s2)acious days, of much fresh air, 

 illimitable horizons, a great deal of solid, un- 

 ostentatious comfort for the stay-at-homes, and 

 also of much discomfort for the tra Atelier ; but 

 altliough no sensible person, fully informed of 

 the conditions of life in tlie long ago, Avould Avish 

 he had been born into those times, yet among 

 their disadvantages aiul the discomforts incidental 

 to travel scarce more tliaii two generations ago, 

 there Avere to be found, as a matter of course, not 

 a fcAV tilings Avliich Avouhl b(; looked upon Avitli 

 rapture by the modern sentimentalist. That was 

 the era Avhen the Suburb Avas unknoAvn anyAvhere 



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