THE OLD ENGLAND OF COACHLNG DAYS 347 



them up so that even the animals themselves Avere 

 conscious of the occasion, and bore themselves 

 with becoming' pride. 



Those old customs are, as a matter of course, 

 gone. Coaches no longer dash through the old 

 "thoroughfare" Adllages ; and when, with the 

 advent of spring, the motorist aj)pears upon the 

 road, the villagers, rather than welcoming his 

 apjiearance, curse him for the clouds of dust he 

 leaves behind. Motor-cars, they tell us, are to 

 repeople the old coaching-roads, Avliose prosperity 

 is, through them, to return, and the j)icturesque 

 old wayside inns, with their memories of the 

 coaching age, are to once again experience the 

 rush of business. It may be so, but no one will 

 regret the fact more than the lover of Old Eng- 

 land, who, in the repeopling of the roads, sees 

 their modernising inevitable, and the equally 

 inevitable bringing " ujd to date " of those quaint, 

 quiet, and comfortable hostelries so dear to the 

 genuine tourist. It is true, they do not dine 

 you elaborately — as your extravagant motorist 

 comjDlaius — but life is not all chicken and cham- 

 pagne, and it will be a sorry day when the plain 

 man, fleeing the gaudy glories of hotels at 

 fashionable resorts, finds the unsophisticated inns 

 of the countryside remodelled on the same plan. 

 Already the picturesqueness of the old roads is 

 threatened. They are, if you please, too hilly, 

 too narrow, or not straight enough for that new 

 tyrant of the highways, the owner of a high- 

 powered motor-car, and plans have actually been 



